The artistic process of Lionel Smit
Lionel Smit is considered one of South Africa’s youngest investment artists, renowned as both a sculptor and painter. He is particularly recognized internationally for his contemporary portraiture created on a monumental scale in both bronze sculpture and oil on canvas.
Smit tends towards working on large-format canvasses with oil paint. For his sculptures, which are created in conversation with paintings, he works with seamed clay putty strips layered over one another and then cast in bronze using the lost-wax method.
Smit has a fascination with female subjects. The artist often works with a single subject as the focal point for any given exhibition, spending time photographing and sketching the model in various stances and with varying expressions. It is during these sittings that themes and focal points begin to coalesce.
Smit often works with a palette of vivid hues and an abstract background. As the brushwork begins, the artist gives special attention to the impasto techniques of the classic masters, creating complex layered visages. This interface between classic portraiture and abstract expressionism is characteristic of his work.
Colour plays a large and symbolic role in Smit’s work and within a body of work for a single exhibition, he often creates pieces that are designed to converse with one another through juxtaposition. Colour work is reflected in the brightly-tinged patinas of his bronzes which often have a turquoise, white and indigo sheen to them.
Creating a collection for an exhibit can sometimes take months due to this layering process, as oils take time to dry. Smit also tends to work on multiple canvasses simultaneously, and as he works, his ideas and preoccupations, the message he may choose to convey with a new collective body of work may alter and evolve. In the last decade, the artist has also focused very much on the intended gallery space, matching the scale of work to the architecture and flow of that particular space.
Generally, Smit is fascinated by the concepts of perception and perspective and hybrid identities. By working with the same subject and showing them in different states, Smit continuously examines these core themes in new, evolved ways.
