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Roxa Smith: Happy Happy (detail) – gouache on board, 2005
Robots, toys and dolls are souvenirs of a simpler time in our lives and this series of paintings serves as a window through which we reminisce. The images often recall toys of the 1950s and 60s, an era when the onset of the Space Race and the rise of technology mesmerized Americans with possibilities as infinite as the galaxy we endeavored to conquer. Colorful recollections of childhood and of history, while painted in our memory as happy and playful, mask emotions of fear and uncertainty that inevitably accompany the loss of innocence.
Animals' ability for unfettered expression is both enviable and foreign within the boundaries of humanity. We are restrained in behavior by our nature and by society, to the extent that one can imagine an animal mocking our comparatively reserved demonstrations of love, need or anger. These paintings transpose a penguin or an elephant, a cat or a bird into spaces customarily inhabited by people, where they may boldly flirt or converse with the bravado we lack. The tone is set for a story to unfold in the human arena transformed by animal instincts.
The spaces we inhabit or visit each take on an individual character and sensibility in our minds, a memory of the time we passed there, of the company we shared. These voyeuristic paintings depict actual places, recalling their essence without seeking to faithfully recreate them. The intimate scale in this ongoing series of gouache on wood portraits, often only 5 by 7 inches, invites the viewer to enter the room, to experience the narrative quality within the quiet space, devoid of people, yet evocative and teeming with life.
The opulent portraits of the Renaissance indulged each sitter with a luxurious portrayal, their external likeness as they wished to be seen. 16th and 17th Century portraiture is reinterpreted here, preserving the lush aesthetic of the period but seeking to render instead the subject's internal likeness by replacing facial features with symbolic references to thoughts or emotions. The outline of the face remains as a border around the mindscape, a visual representation of the momentarily revealed subconscious.