Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of new paintings by veteran gallery artist Charlotte Smith. Catenate is Smith’s eleventh solo exhibition in collaboration with Cris Worley since 2003 and runs November 20 – December 31 with an opening reception Saturday, November 20th from 5-8pm.

Charlotte Smith came to painting in midlife as an architecture student when she began sketching in watercolor at her sick mother’s bedside. What initially started as a pastime, developed into a passion, and she enrolled at the University of North Texas in the Master of Fine Arts program. There, under the tutelage of now retired Vincent Falsetta, Smith began to find her voice. It culminated in a process-heavy form of abstraction that involved her signature drip painting style. Over the last 20 years Smith drips, drops, brushes and blobs have taken on various forms – biomorphic, cosmic, and more recently aquatic.

In the last few years Smith’s practice focused on “white” paintings which were stripped of color allowing form and movement to take center stage. Recurring extended stays at the gulf coast informed the rocking, swaying, and pooling and we saw in the mark-making. Now, in the exhibition Catenate, a return to color finds unexpected chromatic combinations, turning the original source of seaside experience into something more mysterious.

Cris Worley says, “In my 20 plus years of working with Charlotte, I am constantly impressed with her ability to take a signature style to new heights of discovery.”

Charlotte Smith received her MFA from the University of North Texas. Throughout her career, she has presented over thirty solo exhibitions and has been selected for more than twenty juried exhibitions, often receiving awards. She has been published in Global Corporate Collections (2015), Texas Abstract (2014), The State of the Art: Contemporary Artists in Texas (2012), and Texas Artists Today (2010). Her work can be found in the collections of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School, the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, the South Texas Institute for the Arts, and Neiman Marcus stores nationwide, as well as many additional significant collections, both private and corporate, throughout the country.