Brandon Clay Smith: Convulsive Motion

In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, when the monster stirs to life for the first time, the book says there is a “convulsive motion” in the limbs. Invoking something like a newborn animal scrambling clumsily and desperately to stand, or arms reaching after long sleep with tingling fingers too weak to pull one’s weight forward.

The limbs hang and dangle. Lines describe what is there and what is not there. The carved dark shapes, the backs of a hands and elbows are solidly described against a field of smoky neutral pale light. The lines arc toward the lurching bodies to lift or impede the weight. Figures are composed of mismatched proportions, hewn at the joints with fragile red lines. Identity is obscured in thickets of opaque dark masses. In the vague expressive dust of soot and pigment, rests form uneasy in their shape, ungainly and uncomfortable. The blue washes over them, or suspends them in time. They sit, they yell in puddles of pink, wade through streams of viscous red, and troweled on blacks and brown. Trapped in vague spaces of strokes and marks they reach, wobble and try to stand. They are dark and emotional, sentimental even and sometimes wretched in their form. They pay homage to the truth but only fleetingly and uneven. In the spaces between truth and visual chaos, they are both beautiful and grotesque.

An opening reception for Brandon Clay Smith: Convulsive Motion will be held on Friday, February 6th from 6pm-8pm

About the Artist

Joe Hocker is an artist and educator living and working in PBrandon C. Smith has presented work in over 70 solo and group exhibitions nationwide. Selected exhibitions include Gadsden Museum of Art (AL), Fontbonne University in St. Louis (MO), Illinois Central College in Peoria (IL), Chadron State College in Chadron (NE), Heike Pickett Gallery (KY), University of Redlands (CA), Southern Oregon University (OR), Pittsburg State University (KS), Perry Nicole Fine Art (TN), Tennessee Tech University (TN), Pedro Moncayo Foundation (Ibarra Ecuador) M. David Gallery in Brooklyn (NY), UK Art Museum’s exhibition “Frankensteinian”, San Joaquin Delta College (CA), Perry Nicole Fine Art (TN), Seminole Community College (FL), the Chazen Museum of Art (WI), Bennett St. Gallery (GA), Amy Baber Fine Art (LA), The State University of New York (NY) among others.
Brandon C. Smith earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Cincinnati (OH) in 2004. Smith is a Senior Lecturer of Art at the University of Kentucky.

Brandon Clay Smith’s Portfolio Website