A Higher Power
With art, there’s no discrimination about where you draw inspiration to create your work, an array of aspects are at play, and are played around with for one’s own manipulation and interpretation, Artists are taken to universes they themselves never imagined, places that answer questions about self-discovery, leading to galaxies where the cosmic elements are limitless, cue Nancy Willis Smith, who’s idea of artful materials are found simply by looking up and above the sky with the creator’s own universe for inspiration.
Nancy Willis Smith is an artist born near Chicago and currently living in New York City.
Her work explores both the harmony and inherent discords between man and nature, reality and perception, technology and myth.
Nancy’s portrait of planets and rocket ships take center stage with Nancy injecting images of the moon as if they were living human beings just like the rest of the population, reacting to the impact of rockets on the moons they are, feeling the pain as if a golf ball hit you in the face, a perfect chaos of the galaxy in progress.
Smith’s mixed media canvases and her assemblages and dioramas juxtapose surreal images in striking settings with beautiful textures, colors and structural backgrounds.
In the top image, you’ll notice a big hinderance right out of 2020 and still now, but technically it came out of the perils of what we thought 2019 was, it’s COVID19, where according to Nancy is celebrated in Audrey Hepburn style, flaunted in such paraded fashion for all the world to see and be changed by, but it all comes down to Thich Nhat Hahn who Nancy quotes, “no mud, no lotus”, Nancy’s brilliance could be that if there’s no solution to COVID, then no new Renaissance will occur.
Just by coincidence, Nancy worked on a piece about Black Death from The Bubonic Plague in the 1300’s where the only way you could protect yourself from the plague is to wear black beak mask, this portrait also expresses the terror this society was under knowing that a deadly disease could kill them instantly, Nancy didn’t realize how relevant her Black Plague piece would be once the coronavirus hit in early 2020, but gave note how the health care worker sans beak mask for N95 mask, once again we find ourselves looking to the stars for answers on how to beat this pandemic, and how we never must let this happen again.
Nancy Willis Smith draws on a rich imagination that took root in the Midwest and Colorado, flourished in North Africa and the Middle East and now thrives in New York City.
A defining characteristic of her work is the inclusion of curious and extraordinary objects (including fossilized ammonites, monkey ferns, old piano parts and old chandelier orbs) collected on her treks to Nepal, India, Russia and Eastern Europe.
Nancy finds inspiration for art in all places, Nancy came across a 12 inch bone she found on the beach, and painted a wonderful image of a high and mighty woman which fits the shape of this solid, long, and uniquely shaped bone that truly represents the undying strength of the Victorian woman that once ruled her country, the bone by design or not holds strong to what was a great moment in civilization.
Nancy Willis Smith takes inspiration and turns it into a cosmic analysis of what’s going on not only in her universe, but in your everyday life that is your universe which turns into a seismic cosmo description of how our thoughts parallel in many directions, but also illustrate how our universe, as well as the general universe is held in our minds, with room for appreciating the little things such as a brand-new season of warmth, hope, and optimism.