Label
Shirley Smith, American (Kansas), 1929-2013
Yellow Abstract, 1967
oil on canvas and collage
Gift of Scott Smith, 2014
After spending her childhood in the small town of Whitewater, KS, Shirley Smith moved to New York as a budding actress in 1952. A decade later, she abandoned her successful acting career and began working as a professional artist. Despite her long years of absence from Kansas, she never quite left it behind, and from 1982 until she died she spent her summers in her home state.
Her early work, such as Yellow Abstract was done in a style dubbed “lyrical abstraction” by the critics. In its geometric forms it resembles Minimalism and hard-edged painting then at their peak in New York. But its soft edges give it a mellow and organic quality not seen in those styles. Like many of her abstract paintings, it also recalls the wide-open spaces of the Kansas landscape. The geometrical division of its surface suggests plowed fields seen from above. Frost, parched ground, the luminous greens of spring and fall, and the deep, dappled quality of clouds are all evoked by the textured application of paint and the layering of recycled fabric.