Eleven Paintings

Jayne Anita Smith’s work investigates themes such as feminist culture, nature, and spirituality, focusing in this untitled series on childhood religiosity, materialism, and how they impact one’s identity. Just as these works recall historic images of the Virgin Mary, Smith’s deconstructed approach and collage techniques reformulate feminine tropes.

The Virgin Mary is an eternal mothering figure to all who follow in Christ. She brings life and nurturing, her milk seen as sustenance for the faithful, for example, dating back centuries. The Madonna sustains life akin to the air we breathe, a force and a material that is in ways both tangible and immaterial, present and invisible. Smith’s series questions this symbolism, its relevance and its impact, in the twenty-first century. 

Smith plays with the immediate recognition and anonymity of her portrayed female figures. The poses of her women, whether shown at full or three-quarter length, recall typical poses of the Madonna from the likes of Bellini or Raphael. Monument’s figure looks down in apparent modesty of the Italian Renaissance. The wobbling green paint in ldol evokes a Venetian cloth of honor to frame holy or regal figures like the Virgin. While this cloth typically exuded importance and power, the uneven green lines fractured by the pink background appear unstable and precarious rather than grounding or authoritative. Many of the works mimic the shape and color of the golden halo, but it might be slightly off-center (like in Cycles Subsumed or Floater) or it is fragmented, such as in Curtain. Given the artist’s religious upbringing in the Church of England, perhaps she questions the symbolism of the Virgin Mary and the feminine ideals she is meant to represent. 

The Madonna has served as a symbol and a representative of ideal femininity for centuries, encouraging women to be obedient, modest, and chaste. Smith’s figures struggle with this pressure, the sickly sweet color palette appearing to infect, weigh down and fragment the portrayed women. Like air, these messages are ever-present but invisible, as if their omnipresence makes them unquestionable. We breathe in messages as much as air, hearing how we are meant to be and act and feel. The Renaissance images of the Virgin exude perfection for women to embody, though Smith's use of oil in blobs and planes of bright color challenges the image as well as the symbol presented. The artist unveils the Madonna and the messages that her presentation portrays, like the air we breathe, to be delicate and precarious, easily deconstructed, hindered, or even destroyed.

- Jenna Wendler