René Smith makes representational pastel drawings and large oil paintings of figures in real and invented spaces. Her work explores the idea of a perfect moment, both in the lushness of the actual moment and how it fades over time. She is interested in the relationship between physical objects and longing– specifically the experience of looking at an old photograph and the idea of it containing a perfect world or lost moment. Her work utilizes a sense of memory and nostalgia and an idealization of the subject matter to create invented worlds with layered references to different times and places. She is currently working on a series of pastel drawings based on photographs from the late sixties and early seventies that address ideas about privacy, memory, and home.

René Smith has recently shown her work at Deiglan Gallery in Akureyri, Iceland, The Brooklyn Arts Council in New York, The Courthouse Gallery at Anthology Film Archives in New York, and David Allen Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. She has attended residencies at the Gil-Society in Iceland and Vermont Studio Center, and her work was featured in the latest northeastern edition of New American Paintings. Smith received her M.F.A. in Painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and Rome and her B.A. in Painting from Bennington College in Vermont. She lives in Long Island City, Queens, and her studio is located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.