Karen Smidth

"The landscape gives me a wonderful excuse to paint. It allows me to travel under the heavenly skies and search for the essential vistas and split seconds of time that will carry me through my next series of paintings.

When I arrived in California from Denmark in the mid-1980s I was both mesmerized and taken aback by the vastness of the natural panorama along with its aridness and its wildness. It made me feel homesick for my small, wet Danish land. I refused to fall in love with the west coast of the North American Continent. I did not want to understand its subtle song, warm scent, relentless light, perfect mountains and temperamental coast.

In the early 2000s drawing and painting became my daily obsession and with it my senses were opened for what I had not been able to receive. ––My heart broke to this land.

My paintings are reactions to the light, color, and shapes that I see in the landscape. I use the landscape as a pattern or skeleton for what my day as a painter brings; my attempt to understand life. Most paintings have their ugly moments. They need to be wiped, sanded and over painted and this process builds their character. Some paintings have strong connections to a specific moment is time, but they all relate to a place of belonging as well as allowing room for the hue of the day." - Karen Smidth

Karen Smidth’s (b. 1959 Aarhus, Denmark) prolific body of work includes landscape and still life paintings that span almost two decades.

In her early childhood, Smidth relocated from the city to a farm on the island of Fyn with her family. The idyllic setting set her free to roam and explore the landscape that inspired and engrained an enduring love of the natural world. When she was 17 she pursued an opportunity to study metal typography and began a four-year apprenticeship in typesetting with a traditional printing house on the western coast of Denmark. Four years later, Smidth moved to Copenhagen to attend design school and become a graphic designer. Smidth relocated to San Francisco in 1985 where she continued her career in international corporate identity and branding. These experiences were formative for Smidth’s later art practice, as she mastered aesthetic composition, an appreciation for striking landscapes and the fortitude for methodical workmanship.

In the late 1990s, Smidth became interested in painting and began classes at the College of Marin. Her first exhibitions were at the College of Marin and the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art where she quickly grew a base of collectors and fans allowing her to focus full time on her painting practice. The popular appeal of Smidth’s work can be found in her sophisticated, yet emotionally powerful design aesthetic.

As an immigrant from Denmark to the United States, Smidth often discusses her iconic California landscapes as a way to connect to her new homeland. Smidth’s process is one of documentation and deep contemplation. She spends hours driving the countryside, searching for inspired vistas to paint. Once she gets the shot with her camera, she returns to her studio to paint the landscape. Smidth’s interiors and still lifes are also about deep observation and reclamation of imagery. Often the contents of a room she is about to paint are moved around and positioned just so, a continual process-based search for compositional beauty in everyday life.

Smidth’s work oscillates between the artistic traditions of her two home countries - San Francisco Bay Area Figurative and Danish Still Life paintings - bestowing her work with its uncanny universal appeal. While she has shown her work broadly in the United States, and has an international following, she connects deeply with her spectators and finds true joy in the translation of her personal experience of a room or a natural landscape to the viewer. “I’m endlessly experimenting with ways to make these paintings and how to express their emotion; but I do love to invite the viewer to interpret the paintings in a way that’s most meaningful to them.” The results are radical acts of experimental empathy. A beautiful way to interpret the world.