Two years ago Alan took a step back from the responsibilities of being head of the school of fine art at Cheltenham, to focus on his own work.

The result is a series of beautiful and intensely coloured oil paintings which have taken over two years to produce.

...what is at the edge of our vision, sensed as well as seen...

Alan Smith

The paintings explore Smith’s fascination with what is at the edge of our vision - sensed as well as seen; half-remembered thoughts, fragments of memory and feeling, murmured impressions, glimpses of patterns.

Unusually, Smith will also create a new site specific work for Worcester City Art Gallery, which will involve painting directly onto the walls. It is unusual for a painter to work in this way.

Alan Smith - Ellipsis Series

Alan regards this opportunity as an extension of his painting practice rather than as a change of direction. He describes it "as an intervention rather than an installation, and as a challenge to find or realise a painting from the space itself."

Alan will be working in the gallery to bring out aspects of the space which simultaneously draw attention to the paint used and to the implied narratives which the room itself contains.

His interest in the ways we read or often ignore the clues of accumulation, fragmentation, chance and other traces will form the impulse to develop this response to the gallery over time.

The exhibition is held at Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum 8th March–4th May 2003.