Inner Landscapes

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 it as wild as possible, but we meticulously controlled its wildness for clients. It was during this time that I learned to use landscapes 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 new places, raising my kids, riding motorcycles, research, 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 original score by Richard Carpenter