Through painting and drawing I want to question what reality is, what are we looking at? Where does one reality start and another begin in an image. With shifting layers, I place the viewer in between moments. In space or time.  Colour creates remembered new realities. Memory is individual and collective. How I remember an event or era is different to how someone else will remember it.
Colour, reality, history, nostalgia, culture, landscape, forgiveness, dreams and absurdity.
Yesterday was something and tomorrow will be something else.
As an artist I obsess over detail and this brings my work into the abstract. This is in part due to the use of layered acrylic paint. I believe we are all works in progress in a complex system that, itself, is a work in progress; transient, obscure and unknowable. This is where the beauty lies.

Annette Smyth  – December 2025

I paint what I am visually drawn to… objects, people or scenes that I feel compelled to.
At the moment I am painting building sites or more specifically the image that I see when a curtain hides the work in progress of a building site. I like the complexity of the angles and lines, shapes and colours. I also like the temporary nature of the hoarding/curtain. That it is hiding something and all will be revealed in time. Everything is a ‘work in progress’ and it is this ‘progress’ that I am drawn to.
I recently painted my son at 18, he too is a ‘work in progress’
I am interested in the technical aspect of painting… application, colour mixing and truth.

Annette Smyth  – August 2024