Paul Anthony Smith

at Carrie Secrist

with Anne Lindberg and Kent Michael Smith

Non Tourist Location, 2013, unique picotage on pigment print, 29 X 24 inches.

Paul Anthony Smith's manipulated photographs investigate autobiographical, ancestral, and cultural self-identification. For the works in the Secrist exhibition, Smith employs a technique called picotage, wherein he uses a ceramic tool to pick away the top layer of photographic images. Referencing African scarification and masking, these tears shimmer as if flecked with glitter. His obscured black figures are abstracted cultural portraits, feeding the artist's interests in family history and heritage, as well as his broader research into African Diaspora.

Smith was born in St.Anns Bay, Jamaica. He grew up in Port Antonio, a city on the north east coast of the Island. As a young child he relocated to Miami, Florida, where he studied at New World School of the Arts. He then relocated to Kansas City where he earned his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2010.

Click here for the Carrie Secrist website and here for Smith's website.