Inner Landscapes

My work uses nature to visualize the emotional worlds of women. Using graphite and erasers, I create large imagined landscapes on paper that are drawn from both the world around me and within me. I am a mother, daughter, wife, and woman, and these roles are at once nourishing, complex, and difficult. Using myself as a model, I explore emotional landscapes under the guise of drawn landscapes.

The drawings take cues from instances of non-verbal communication throughout time—the gesture of a woman’s hand in a centuries-old portrait, a rebel plant pushing through the sidewalk, a pause in a film—and looks at the dialogue between what is said and what is shown. The resulting artworks blend beauty, overwhelm, collapse, and light together into atmospheric landscapes that mirror the emotional or mental states that I’m accessing during the drawing process. I listen to books, music, and podcasts while I draw that further connect me with the inner experiences of others and myself. Partially legible notes jotted on the paper remain visible among the leaves in the finished drawings, offering glimpses into these worlds. Accumulations of pencil marks are also archives of labor and care, and the heavy handed erasures are physical reminders to let go to make space for the future.

Guided by nature, my practice reconnects me with the nature within myself. The act of drawing is how I process being a modern woman. My drawings are artifacts of this ongoing evolution.

About

I live with my family in Amsterdam, but grew up on a small farm in Maryland. My parents were naturalists who ironically also ran a landscaping company. Our lives revolved around curating nature. On our land we worked to keep nature as wild as possible, but we meticulously controlled its wildness for clients. It was during this time that I learned to use the landscape as a way to communicate. Both the freedom and majesty I observe in nature, and the organization and structure of recreating it have voices in my work.

Beyond my work I enjoy reading, exploring, traveling, riding motorcycles, raising my kids, researching & practicing wellness, going to the cinema, getting dressed, studying color, visiting gardens, and I am a Toastmaster.

You can find me on Instagram at @wolfsonsmith

And you can find my book recommendations here

Video and score by Richard Carpenter of Storyminute