Roxa Smith Verified listing

I have a long history of painting familiar domestic environments, landscapes and everyday objects. My work is influenced by my Venezuelan upbringing coupled with a passion for lush color, intricate patterns, naïve and outsider art. My acrylic and gouache paintings blend familiar environments with imagined visions of a place. Through the lens of my experience, I idealize and dramatize imagery to form and re-form a visual narrative.

The paintings emerge from a slow and meticulous process as I metaphorically collage images from my friends', family's and my own personal possessions, as well as from online sources, to create compositions steeped in personal symbolism and memory.

Whether exploring interior spaces or landscapes, my work centers on the traces of human presence and activity. My interior "roomscapes" contain no people, yet markers of persons' lives punctuate each piece through personal objects and furnishings. In contrast, my landscapes feature tiny figures that pepper the cityscapes, but these small presences function much like the objects in my interiors—both serve as evidence of life itself, whether intimate and personal or part of the larger urban rhythm.

These works are crowded with plants, furniture and objects in the interiors, or animated by small human figures in the landscapes, all exploding with luscious vibrant color and flat contrasting patterns. I juxtapose architectural forms and skewed perspectives with luminous colors, intricate patterns and details to transform everyday scenes into explosions of line and color. My pieces become lively, effervescent meditations where planes oscillate as the viewer moves through space, celebrating everyday environments—from the wonder in our domestic spaces to the energy of urban landscapes. Familiar yet idiosyncratic, they offer off-kilter reconsiderations of spatial possibilities that celebrate the beauty and joy of the everyday.

Intimate vignettes that make up everyday life: the way a coffee table or nightstand is arranged, the view from a window, the books, plants, and other miscellany that accumulate on a bookshelf, the reflection of a glass table.

Colorful Patterns in rugs, furniture, floors and walls. In my work I am interested in the  over indulgence use of the patterns

Other inspiration: Flowers, plants and flower patterns and bright bold color.

Play of shadows and off kilter persepective

2024 Best in Show, Color Competition, Artist Space Gallery.

2021 The Walter J. and Anna H. Burchan Trust Memorial Prize, Cooperstown Art Association, Cooperstown, NY.

2020 Vermont Studio Center Artist Grant, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT.

2017 Finalist for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Arts and Design program , Brooklyn, NY.

2013 Artist Fellowship at the Sheldon Museum, Lincoln, NE.

2012 Painting Fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) New York, NY.

2011 NYFA Scholarship: Artist as an Entrepreneur, New York, NY.

2007 Alexander Rutsch Award painting finalist, Pelham Art Center, Pelham, NY.

2006 ARTnews Award, 71st Annual National Exhibition, Cooperstown, NY.