Ray Smith: Works

by Ray Campbell Smith, Omar Pascual, Richard Vine

Surrealist and Animist influences from Ray Smith's Latin heritage are as present as his deep study of modern art in these engaging, poetic paintings. Of the mingling of species on his canvases, he has said that his animals are "entities of the human figure beasts, but directly related to a blueprint of our own existence." Works" looks back on the artist's lineage, both national and artistic, and appropriates Picasso's dark Catalonian menagerie, revising it to address the current Mexican political situation and to forge a direct link between the two Hispanic traditions. Smith's work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Menil Collection. He was born near the Texas/Mexico border to a Mexican mother and an American father, and he currently splits his time between the two countries.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2006

About the author

Internationally noted artist Ray Smith has exhibited in solo and group shows around the world. A lecturer at the Chelsea School of Art and at Exeter Art College, he was recently Artist-in-Residence at the University of Southampton in the UK. Smith has received many distinguished awards for his work, including an Arts Council Award, a Lindbury Trust artist's award, and the Deutscher Jugendbuch Preis. He has written several titles in The DK Art School series, and is the author of The Artist's Handbook and How to Draw and Paint What You See.