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Jeffrey Smart's The Guiding Spheres II 1979-80

901 Words4 Pages

Jeffrey Smart (1921-2013) was an Australian painter who was widely known for his surreal and detailed artworks of urban and industrial landscapes. His artworks were mostly painted with oil, acrylic and watercolours, and many of his paintings had the consistent theme of dark grey skies. Bold subject matters were often found in his artworks presented with primary colours, yellow, red and blue. One of Smart’s oil and acrylic paintings, The Guiding Spheres II 1979-80, featured art elements and principles intended to keep the audience moving around the artwork. Smart used combinations of colour and contrast, scale and focal point and form, balance and proportion in this particular painting to achieve movement from the viewer’s perspective. Smart …show more content…

When looking at the painting for the first time, the viewer’s attention is caught by the bold red, blues, yellows and whites. The prominent primary colours illuminate a clear visual path for the viewer to follow as the subject matters are so vivid compared to the muddy background. The viewer first looks at the golden spheres, starting from the biggest one, before observing the blue and then the red truck. The white diagonal line on the bottom of the truck engages the curiosity of the audience, provoking them to follow down to the dashed road markings. The process is then repeated subconsciously, highlighting how the artwork keeps the viewer moving around the artwork. Colours were effectively used in Smart’s paintings, “generally using the bold primary colours – yellow, blue and red – and dark greys for his skies. This …show more content…

By upscaling the size of the first sphere to enlarge it, Smart creates a focal point and captures the immediate attention of the viewer. Once looking at the emphasised shape, the audience naturally follows down the line of the spheres and then jumps over the lane to the blue truck before viewing the red truck in front of it. “Much of Smart's direct artistic stimulation came from, literally, a passing glance as he was driving”. Smart reveals how "My paintings have their origins in a passing glance” and adds that “Sometimes I'll drive around for months ... despair, nothing, nothing, then suddenly I will see something that seizes me: a shape, a combination of shapes, a play of light or shadows and I send up a prayer because I know I have the gem of a picture”, inspiring a new perspective to the influences behind his concepts and works. Furthermore, the decreasing size of the spheres as they progress creates the perception of distance and builds onto the viewers' visual journey around the

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