Samantha Keely Smith: In Between

Jane Lombard Gallery is pleased to present In Between, Samantha Keely Smith’s first exhibition with the gallery. Known for her visually immersive paintings, Smith merges abstraction and figuration to explore the shifting boundaries of the subconscious. 

Drawing from vivid dreams and internal landscapes, Smith’s works inhabit a world in flux where memories dissolve, reform, and fold into each other in waves. Figures emerge from dense layers of oil paint only to submerge again into swirling abstraction. In her painting Convergence, two figures angelically hover among swirls of pink and blue, bearing resemblances to the Old Masters and Rococo styles. The figures flicker into visibility—porcelain skin and rosy cheeks appear—then blur. 

Smith's figures hover on the edge of recognition, their fleeting presence evoking the ephemeral quality of passing thoughts. She uses bold brushstrokes and palette knives, ebbing between clarity and opacity. Her intuitive process creates moments of striking beauty and strange dissonance, where clashing colors push against each other. In Slipstream, there is a felt tension between the lush pinks and lime greens, while in Fallen From Stars, dark oceanic blues are contrasted by shining golden ambers. 

Detailed depictions of hands, frequently modeled after her own, become intimate counterpoints to the more abstract or obscured elements. These hands serve as anchors, tethering the ethereal figure to a tangible body, and additionally hint at the artist herself reflecting on the act of painting as a personal gesture. In A Moment, a hand is stretched out, reaching toward the foreground. Gold embers seem to emanate from her finger tips, her face hidden behind paint, turning her outstretched palm into a portrait of its own. 

Suggesting both celestial and underwater realms, Smith mirrors the profound emotional depths of the psyche. Her work is defined by a constant sense of movement. Bodies float, dissolve, or slip beneath the surface. Through an intimate process of layering, dissolving, and repainting, Smith captures fleeting moments, inviting viewers into a world of ethereal transition, as though we are catching a glimpse of a moment just before it disappears.