Clay Smith Art | Incommunicado in Death (CM)
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Incommunicado in Death (CM)

Death is a harbinger. It provokes a deep, meditative sabbatical foray that allows healing to occur. This series extrapolates family and friends  passing through referencing mutual connection points. Shared habitual touchstones of connectedness are referenced in the carefully selected iconography.


The series takes the place value of activities and Items of importance that were orally communicated in life and juxtaposes them against historical death symbology  from Tibet. There is a sacrificial oneness in the customary offerings and rituals behind the methods in making Death Skulls. This idea is transposed conceptually into the aforementioned selected Iconography that populates the picture planes in the paintings that are considered the pre-death communication between the artist friends and relatives Like Damo  (2015) and Dad (2015).


In the post death prints Damo Dies  edition of 3 (2015) and  painting Dad Dies (2015), the emptiness  associated with of the loss of contact or incommunicado relationship that now exists is alluded to through the emptiness of negative space in the prints and an abandoned mansion in the painting. The Mansion also playfully references religious symbology of that which arrives in the afterlife. The dark, haunted and empty rooms look at the constant broken and repaired cyclical state of the relationship that the artist had with his father.