Welsh Visual Artist Andrew Smith
When Place Becomes Colour Memory
Rahim Youssef / Baghdad
When Place Becomes Colour Memory
Rahim Youssef / Baghdad
A question emerges on the horizon of Andrew Smith’s artistic practice concerning the transformation of place into colour memory. Yet this question soon leads us to another, more precise one: how does an artist paint a place? Perhaps, however, we should replace this question with another: what remains of a place after it is gone?
The answer would be: its trace remains.
And this trace places us face to face with the dialectic of presence and absence. What concerns us here is the trace—the element that Smith reconstructs through colour. When colour ceases to be merely one of the components of the pictorial surface and becomes the fundamental structure upon which it rests, we are no longer confronted with colour that describes things. Instead, we encounter colour beginning to generate a meaning of its own. It is perhaps from precisely this point that we can enter Smith’s artistic practice, in which his relationship with colour appears to extend far beyond a search for visual variety or expressive energy.
The answer would be: its trace remains.
And this trace places us face to face with the dialectic of presence and absence. What concerns us here is the trace—the element that Smith reconstructs through colour. When colour ceases to be merely one of the components of the pictorial surface and becomes the fundamental structure upon which it rests, we are no longer confronted with colour that describes things. Instead, we encounter colour beginning to generate a meaning of its own. It is perhaps from precisely this point that we can enter Smith’s artistic practice, in which his relationship with colour appears to extend far beyond a search for visual variety or expressive energy.
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| Rabat 2023 acrylic on canvas 100 x 100cm. Private collection |
In his pictorial surfaces, place does not appear as a ready-made landscape awaiting reproduction, nor as a subject that can be reduced to a collection of external signs. Instead, it becomes a sensory experience in which vision intersects with movement, memory, and emotion.
Smith’s practice is clearly connected to colour, place, and direct visual experience. His international residencies and artistic projects have become an important part of the development of his vision. In discussing his practice of “scapes,” the artist connects working on site with exploratory studies and subsequent reflection, allowing the experience to develop through multiple dimensions of the subject before reaching its final form. The institutions that have hosted his work have emphasised that working on site, followed by reflection, forms an essential part of his practice, and that in his more recent work colour has become “the subject and the image” at the same time.
Thus, place begins to depart from its external image.
When we stand before an abstract pictorial surface, we often search for a sign that will lead us towards a specific subject: a mountain, a sea, a tree, a street, or a building. Smith, however, encourages us to abandon this kind of search. For him, place does not need to retain its physical features in order to remain present. Geography may disappear, but its light remains; objects may disappear, but their movement remains; and even when the scene itself has vanished, the emotion it generated may remain.
Thus, painting becomes an act of recovering place rather than representing it.
Smith’s practice is clearly connected to colour, place, and direct visual experience. His international residencies and artistic projects have become an important part of the development of his vision. In discussing his practice of “scapes,” the artist connects working on site with exploratory studies and subsequent reflection, allowing the experience to develop through multiple dimensions of the subject before reaching its final form. The institutions that have hosted his work have emphasised that working on site, followed by reflection, forms an essential part of his practice, and that in his more recent work colour has become “the subject and the image” at the same time.
Thus, place begins to depart from its external image.
When we stand before an abstract pictorial surface, we often search for a sign that will lead us towards a specific subject: a mountain, a sea, a tree, a street, or a building. Smith, however, encourages us to abandon this kind of search. For him, place does not need to retain its physical features in order to remain present. Geography may disappear, but its light remains; objects may disappear, but their movement remains; and even when the scene itself has vanished, the emotion it generated may remain.
Thus, painting becomes an act of recovering place rather than representing it.
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Madersa Salé 2023 acrylic on canvas 100 x 150cm |
Let us move closer to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who reconsidered perception through the body and the lived world. For him, the body is not simply an object existing within a place; it is the means through which we are present in the world and connected to it. Perception is not a passive reception of an image arriving from outside, but a living relationship between the body and the world. In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty focused on the lived body and the sensible world, and on the way the body organises our experience and our position within the world.
Accordingly, we can understand what Smith does in a different way. He does not stand outside a place, observe it, and then transfer it onto the pictorial surface. Rather, he enters the place, moves through it, experiences its light, distances, and rhythms, and then carries that experience with him.
What reaches the pictorial surface, therefore, is not the place as it once was, but the place as it has become after passing through the artist’s body, consciousness, and memory.
The process of recovery passes through consciousness, transforming the eye from an instrument of seeing into a means of experiencing. Perception is not merely an image, and this is one of the important points in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. Perception is released from being simply an image that settles in the eye and becomes connected to the body, movement, position, and lived world. Even space itself is not experienced as a purely geometric domain, but as a space in which we move and within which we live.
This sheds light on an important aspect of Smith’s practice. When the artist works in response to a particular place, he does not recover the distance between himself and that place; he recovers his relationship with it. Thus, on the pictorial surface, we may find a colour that refers to nothing specific yet carries a sense of place; a line that does not represent a road yet retains the rhythm of movement; or an area that does not depict land yet recalls its expansiveness or density.
We do not see the place; we feel it.
This is an important possibility within Smith’s practice: making the absent tangible through colour.
Another question then emerges: does this mean that he paints memory?
The answer is: memory intervenes, but not entirely.
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Dar Slimane Residency, Marrakech, Morocco 2022/3 |
Memory, therefore, is not a repository of images, but a force that reorganises experience.
For this reason, colour in Smith’s pictorial surfaces cannot be reduced to its visual value. It carries a previous time, perhaps a previous place, but it does not present that place to us as it once was. Instead, it presents it as it has become within consciousness.
Colour thus becomes, precisely here, memory.
If Merleau-Ponty helps us understand place through perception and the body, Martin Heidegger opens another door concerning the relationship between human beings, place, and being.
For Heidegger, place is not merely a geometric void within which objects exist. In his essay Building Dwelling Thinking, dwelling is connected to the way human beings exist in the world. Place cannot be understood separately from humanity’s relationship with the things and locations in which we dwell. Heidegger emphasises that the human relationship with place cannot be reduced to the geometric measurement of distances; rather, it is connected to dwelling, inhabitation, and the manner of being present in the world.
From this perspective, we can read Smith’s practice as a search for the trace of human dwelling within place, rather than merely its external image.
The artist does not simply visit a place and leave it behind. He takes it with him into the studio.
The desert does not remain where it was. The light of Morocco does not remain in Morocco. The experience of China does not remain confined to its geography. All of this enters memory and later returns to the pictorial surface as colour, movement, and rhythm.
The pictorial surface thus becomes another place, rather than a copy of the original one. It is place after it has been shaped by consciousness.
This reading becomes particularly significant when we consider Smith’s experiences in China and Morocco. His extended residency in China during 2023–2024 formed an important part of the development of his practice and was connected to his interest in absorbing approaches to making and application from a non-Western perspective. His extended residency in Morocco, meanwhile, was associated with areas near the Atlas Mountains and with the profound influence of desert light on his practice. Sources connected with his exhibition with John Hedley indicate that these residencies inspired new works produced in his studio in Harlech.
At the “Colour Connections” exhibition, which brought Andrew Smith and John Hedley together at Oriel Môn in 2024, Smith presented vibrant abstract works on canvas, created in response to place and site. His recent residencies in China and Morocco served as sources for these works. The exhibition also included works associated with China, among them a group bearing titles referring to Chongqing.
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Chongquin 2024 acrylic on canvas 144 x 136 cm |
Travel thus becomes part of the process of reshaping perception, because an artist does not move from one place to another with an empty memory. He carries with him what he has previously seen, what he has previously painted, and what he has previously felt.
The new place does not therefore erase previous places; it enters into dialogue with them.
Perhaps this is why some of Smith’s pictorial surfaces appear to contain layers of multiple places, making it impossible to identify a single location. Place itself has become composite, and this composite represents visual memory.
Because colour occupies the forefront of the experience, it also generates form to a significant degree, reversing the traditional relationship between colour and form. In representational painting, colour may serve to complete a form that already exists. In Smith’s work, however, colour participates in creating the form itself. Colour masses stand alongside one another, lines intersect, marks recur, and the structure gradually emerges from within colour.
For this reason, abstraction in Smith’s work is not a departure from reality, but a movement from the visible towards the sensible.
He does not say, “This is a mountain”; instead, he makes us feel the weight of the mountain.
He does not say, “This is light”; instead, he makes light occur within the pictorial surface.
He does not say, “This is a place”; instead, he allows us to experience the presence of place despite the absence of its image.
This vision is also connected to rhythm, repetition, and spontaneity, which are evident in his recent practice. Movement is not merely a means of constructing the pictorial surface; it is also part of the memory of its making. Every line carries a trace of the movement of the hand, every layer of colour points to an earlier moment, and every repetition reveals a moment of searching.
The pictorial surface can therefore be understood as a memory of the act of painting itself. It preserves not only the result but also the path that led to it.
Recent writings introducing his practice reinforce this relationship between colour and action, describing his painting as a record of the movement of the mind and pointing to the presence of rhythm, repetition, and spontaneity, while suggesting that colour itself has become both subject and image.
Painting thus becomes accumulated time: a sequence of actions, decisions, and additions whose traces retain their presence even when we can no longer identify them directly.
We can reach a deeper level of the experience through Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. Merleau-Ponty enables us to see place through the body and perception, while Heidegger helps us understand place through being and dwelling. Between the two, we can view Smith’s practice as a movement from the place we see to the place we live.
The external place does not remain outside the artist. It enters his body through perception, his memory through experience, and the pictorial surface through colour. Abstraction in his work is therefore not a separation from the world, but another way of returning to it.
The further the form moves away from representation, the closer the sensation becomes.
The more geography disappears, the more its trace emerges.
The more the subject recedes, the greater the ability of colour to speak.
The pictorial surface consequently becomes a kind of inner place—a place that cannot be located on a map, yet exists within memory, sensation, and the body.
It is place after it has become personal experience.
Returning to colour in Smith’s work, it is not merely something we see, but something that happens to us. We do not read colour as we read a linguistic sign; instead, we enter into its relationships. It may open up a space, compress it, generate movement, or evoke a feeling of a place that we can no longer see.
This is what makes colour in his practice resemble an act of perception. It does not add meaning to place; it reconstructs place through sensation.
We may therefore say that Smith does not paint place itself, but rather the way place exists within consciousness.
Here, his practice intersects with Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger without becoming a literal application of either philosophy. The former helps us understand how the world enters experience through the body and perception; the latter helps us understand how place becomes more than a physical space, becoming a relationship with dwelling and being.
Thus, colour in Andrew Smith’s practice is no longer merely one element of composition. It becomes a medium between place and memory, between what was and what remains of it, and between external geography and the place that settles within consciousness.
When the image of a place disappears, this does not mean that the place itself has completely vanished. It may remain in a colour, a movement, a rhythm, or a trace.
And it is precisely here that the value of the practice is established: it does not seek to recreate a place as it once was, but to reveal what the place leaves within us after we have departed.
The new place does not therefore erase previous places; it enters into dialogue with them.
Perhaps this is why some of Smith’s pictorial surfaces appear to contain layers of multiple places, making it impossible to identify a single location. Place itself has become composite, and this composite represents visual memory.
Because colour occupies the forefront of the experience, it also generates form to a significant degree, reversing the traditional relationship between colour and form. In representational painting, colour may serve to complete a form that already exists. In Smith’s work, however, colour participates in creating the form itself. Colour masses stand alongside one another, lines intersect, marks recur, and the structure gradually emerges from within colour.
For this reason, abstraction in Smith’s work is not a departure from reality, but a movement from the visible towards the sensible.
He does not say, “This is a mountain”; instead, he makes us feel the weight of the mountain.
He does not say, “This is light”; instead, he makes light occur within the pictorial surface.
He does not say, “This is a place”; instead, he allows us to experience the presence of place despite the absence of its image.
This vision is also connected to rhythm, repetition, and spontaneity, which are evident in his recent practice. Movement is not merely a means of constructing the pictorial surface; it is also part of the memory of its making. Every line carries a trace of the movement of the hand, every layer of colour points to an earlier moment, and every repetition reveals a moment of searching.
The pictorial surface can therefore be understood as a memory of the act of painting itself. It preserves not only the result but also the path that led to it.
Recent writings introducing his practice reinforce this relationship between colour and action, describing his painting as a record of the movement of the mind and pointing to the presence of rhythm, repetition, and spontaneity, while suggesting that colour itself has become both subject and image.
Painting thus becomes accumulated time: a sequence of actions, decisions, and additions whose traces retain their presence even when we can no longer identify them directly.
We can reach a deeper level of the experience through Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. Merleau-Ponty enables us to see place through the body and perception, while Heidegger helps us understand place through being and dwelling. Between the two, we can view Smith’s practice as a movement from the place we see to the place we live.
The external place does not remain outside the artist. It enters his body through perception, his memory through experience, and the pictorial surface through colour. Abstraction in his work is therefore not a separation from the world, but another way of returning to it.
The further the form moves away from representation, the closer the sensation becomes.
The more geography disappears, the more its trace emerges.
The more the subject recedes, the greater the ability of colour to speak.
The pictorial surface consequently becomes a kind of inner place—a place that cannot be located on a map, yet exists within memory, sensation, and the body.
It is place after it has become personal experience.
Returning to colour in Smith’s work, it is not merely something we see, but something that happens to us. We do not read colour as we read a linguistic sign; instead, we enter into its relationships. It may open up a space, compress it, generate movement, or evoke a feeling of a place that we can no longer see.
This is what makes colour in his practice resemble an act of perception. It does not add meaning to place; it reconstructs place through sensation.
We may therefore say that Smith does not paint place itself, but rather the way place exists within consciousness.
Here, his practice intersects with Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger without becoming a literal application of either philosophy. The former helps us understand how the world enters experience through the body and perception; the latter helps us understand how place becomes more than a physical space, becoming a relationship with dwelling and being.
Thus, colour in Andrew Smith’s practice is no longer merely one element of composition. It becomes a medium between place and memory, between what was and what remains of it, and between external geography and the place that settles within consciousness.
When the image of a place disappears, this does not mean that the place itself has completely vanished. It may remain in a colour, a movement, a rhythm, or a trace.
And it is precisely here that the value of the practice is established: it does not seek to recreate a place as it once was, but to reveal what the place leaves within us after we have departed.
First published at Almustaqel Independent Newspaper 2026.10.11
About Rahim Youssef.
Born in Baghdad in 1961. Poet, journalist, and visual arts critic writing for Iraqi and Arab newspapers and magazines.
Published book:
\- Saad Ali: The Dance of Life
Forthcoming books:
* Thawra City: Faces and Stories — a ten-volume series.
* The Dreamers: Writings on Contemporary Visual Art — a five-volume series.
Memberships and positions:
* Member of the Iraqi Journalists Syndicate.
* Member of the Iraqi Artists Syndicate.
* Member of the Iraqi Plastic Artists Association.
* Founder and advisor of the Iraqi Journalists Union.
