Gina Smith is a contemporary portrait painter whose work explores and celebrates local communities. Gina’s work documents intimate moments between family, close friends, acquaintances and the environments they are found within.
Her first love is documenting people and moments which are often fleeting and forgotten. She continuously captures and vlogs her interactions and experiences as a young person and uses stills from these recordings to inspire her work, drawing inspiration from the captured light, movement, and moment. Smith tries to capture the people she paints as accurately as possible, whether that be in the way in which she paints them, their expressions or choice of colour.
As paintings last longer than memories, Gina looks to help eternalise hers so they are never forgotten. Her work's power comes from its intrinsic ability to prompt viewers to look inward, reflecting on their own personal experiences, connections and communities.
“Everything I paint is real life. It’s either something I’ve lived through, experienced, or stills from videos and shoots.”
Gina aspires to create a familiarity within her work where people see themselves in the paintings , creating their own narratives or placing themselves into the story that she has written/painted.
GS is highly regarded for her art exhibitions, with her previous show taking place in February 2024. ‘Finding It Hard to Communicate’ delved into the complexities and nuances of human connection in an age where information flows abundantly, yet genuine understanding of each other seems elusive. With this body of work, Smith wanted to demonstrate the difficulties when using our words and how tiring it is expressing what we truly feel to each other. The collection seemed to unravel the threads that bind us together, exploring challenges, and beauty inherent in the art of connecting. By drawing references from music and poetry, Smith wished to represent all things real: life, love and death.
In a world constantly moving forward, Gina’s work encourages personal moments of reflection enabling her work to inspire people from any background or age.
finding myself in everyone else.
A deeply introspective exhibition that explored the intricate interplay of identity, connection, and reflection. Following on from Gina Smith's debut show, "Finding It Hard To Communicate (FIHTC)". The pieces challenged viewers to consider the mirror-like quality of human relationships, where traits emotions, and even flaws are refracted back to us, urging us to confront the multifaceted nature of identity. The exhibition blurs the line between the self and the other, inviting visitors to recognise the parts of themselves that resonate with others' experiences, struggles, and triumphs. Through her travels and day to day living Smith explores the people she has around her, and through studies of their faces and expressions, presents 40 paintings in alternating colours in an obsessive like collection. Alongside these, she displays a direct continuation of FIHTC, with an expanded view of the moments which linger between each portrait painting. Each painting has a polaroid adjacent, stating a name, place and date in a documentation of the last few months.
“l occilate between obsession and disinterest, and if I stay in one place, rigor mortis will set in that's why I am finding myself in everyone else. but also not finding myself at all.”
The exhibition would launch on the night of Saturday March 1 and be open the following day between 12-5pm. All the hard work would pay off with Gina saying: “i literally don't know how to express how amazing this past weekend has felt thank you so much to everyone who came and also everyone who took part in being my muse” Further expressing that the reaction was a lot more than anything she had previously experienced, especially because it was an unseen body of work. The immediate feeling of nothing but love is pushing Smith to create more work & get back into the swing of things!
Interview
I think creative people always find a way to express themselves. Where did your artistic journey begin?
I began with art therapy when i was around 12 and from then i just carried on in school and ended up taking it at uni. I just enjoyed doing it so I've just carried on doing it and im so lucky to be able to do it as a career now
Do you have a routine when beginning your creative process?
I always start with an inspiration picture, mostly now it's ones i take myself after i've been out or something i find deep in my camera roll and then i work on colours and size and see what vibe i want to go with.
How would you handle a creative block? What methods do you have to overcome it? (Do you even get it?)
Just allowing myself to reset and have a break is the main thing, none of my best work comes out of frustration so giving my brain a chance to start again is the best i can do.
What causes the choice of colour in your art?
The current colour theme was because i ran out of skin and tonal colours, so i just started playing with pink blues and greens. My work is more on the realism side so it didn't take away from the real life aspect.
Do you have a favourite piece you're most proud of?
At the moment it's probably "renaissance" because it really pushed my boundaries with how many people i paint in one go, i think there was like 14. I just liked portraying the energy of the moment and it was one of the most pivotal moments for me as an artist so far
"renaissance"
Len & GS Shot by @6kish_ & @seankeav
What's next for GS? Any teasers or top secret projects on the way?
Currently i'm in the middle of a planning process for my next personal project but I really want to push the commission projects and collab with some people to create some cool pieces for them
random RELOAD questions dropping soon on IG
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