SANTA MONICA, CA .- Mark Moore Gallery introduces work by artist Ali Smith in the Project Room. Through her use of impasto, energetic hues and bold forms, Smith produces abstract terrains that hover on the brink of disorder and chaos while simultaneously remaining playful and engaging. The fleeting, eclectic quality of her canvases is restrained by an aesthetic sense of composition and color, and the result is a delightful visual indulgence that exploits every possibility of paint. Smith manipulates her medium to create hugely varied landscapes; some areas two dimensional, calm planes, others burst forth from the surface as mountains of texture and color. It is the delectable, tactile, excessive quality that makes Smith's work so appealing; the viewer must resist the child-like urge to plunge their fingers towards the canvas and further manipulate the paint, continuing Smith's creative process.

The dichotomies expressed on each canvas verge on collapse while still maintaining the control of color and composition that give them their exciting exuberance, their willingness to be dangerous and their ultimate success.

Ali Smith received her MFA from California State University where she was awarded a Fine Arts scholarship. She completed an artist's residency at Stichting Kaus Australis in the Netherlands and has exhibited in Europe, Japan and the United States. Smith's work has been shown in the Mark Moore Gallery booth at Pulse New York and Art Chicago thus far this year. Her work is included in, amongst other collections, the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation. She lives and works in Long Beach, CA.