Jeffrey Smart was born in Adelaide in South Australia and is now based in Tuscanny.
He continues to produce conforinting works at 80 years of age, and would have to be one of my favourite Australian artists.
His fascination with the precarious "beuty" of underpasses and parking lots, highways and goods yards, denotes a predilicition not a program.
There is nothing that he wants to tell us about these places, no hint of socila commentary or underlying narrative.
Blank faced adults and stoney-face chidren are no more interesting than the concrete structures and environment they inhabit.
Time has no meaning in his paintings. It could be said that his best painting are as ambiguous as dreams, they are infinitely suggestive but reveal nothing. They present a vision of the world but all interpretations remain speculative.
If one had to find a way of isolating Jeffrey Smart's particular achievement as a painter, it may be that he makes us acutely aware of the difference between looking at something, and actually seeing it.
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