All We Need is A Window to Some Sky

Living and working in Glasgow, Ellie Forestal Smith’s practice acts as a response to the urban scenery that surrounds her. She uses painting to experiment with and develop abstracted visuals that aim to look at the often-overlooked elements of daily life. The work offers a different ‘take’ on reflections of the urban every day with a light, playful touch. By focusing on subtle and understated mark making a sense of ambiguity and fleetingness is created whilst catching glimpses of our shared environments. Her practice is not about absolutes, conclusions or definitions but is based on intuitively following a path of investigation.

The subject matter includes things that are easily forgotten about which are intricately woven into our everyday rhythms; fences that we walk past, that separate one area from another, underpasses that are dark, even in bright sunlight, repeated patterns of a window and shadows seen on evening walks. Forestal Smith is noticing the unassuming and interesting stimuli happened upon during any walk through an urban area. There is an interest in light and space, and how these elements are created within painting and drawing. The distinction between the unfinished and the finished is questioned, and concepts of provisional painting and minimal abstraction are explored. Central to the work is the challenge of knowing when to stop—when to leave a piece with enough space to, in the words of art critic Raphael Rubinstein, “rest lightly on the earth.”

Forestal Smith works alongside materials with curiosity, as they too act as subjects of the work. The knots and natural patterning of salvaged plywood are used as background textures and colours to the painting, making the material as important as the mark making. The approach to making is rooted in staying curious and playing, keeping things quick and light through continuous development in the studio. This involves a combination of stitching, taking apart, rearranging, working on top of, stretching and unstretching to figure out potential visual conversations between these materials. It is based on a generative process, where one idea leads to another, creating a continuous dialogue within the work. This process often moves towards a point of reduction where traces of material being removed and covered up becomes a key element in the work, attempting to keep an openness that leaves some work for the viewer to do.