Who's the unexpected blonde? Ken Smith knows
The semester is well on its way, already filled with minutia, new potentials, the first weeks of an instructional design course and one spectacular poster exhibition opening (for the sake of my interest, let’s call it a printmaking show). All this has caused time’s passage to move in fast momentum until today.And here we are. Today. Are you with me?What is so time stopping about now – I have another “What’s on Ken Smith’s easel” to post.Except, I don’t.Instead I admit I missed the opportunity to post one while the painting was still in the King Smith Studio. So today I have a show opening announcement instead, featuring what WAS on Ken Smith’s easel.In the exhibition “Faculty Downtown: Art Faculty Show,” Ken has three new paintings he created this summer. All are landscapes – mostly.There is the one from Lynton on England’s Southwest cost. It features the Rhenish Tower, located on the town’s public beach. What makes this painting different from his other landscapes is he decided to add the people in the scene who were actually there.In listening to him while he worked on this project, his plan was to approach the painting with the looseness he seems to favor in his other landscapes. I am hoping he will blog about this – the reality was much closer to his process for working on historically-themed paintings, in which he would tell you “the devil is in the detail” (that is my cliché, not his words).So, this show opens Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2016 at 5 p.m. in the Radford University Art Museum Downtown (in Radford, Virginia). Most of the faculty artists should be in attendance, including Ken Smith.The exhibition runs until Oct. 8 and there is a closing reception at 2 p.m. that day. After this, the show moves to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C.And oh, do recognize the blonde? Do you really?