Painting through the pain

By 2008, Smith said she had gone through the worst part of her life -- losing four family members within two years. "The final person to leave me was my mother," she said of Albertha Green.

She was overcome by grief and searching for a way to deal with it. With encouragement from her husband, Michael, she started to paint with acrylics.

"On Christmas Eve, Michael encouraged me to do something to deal with my loss," Smith said. "He bought me all the supplies needed to paint."

Having worked as a registered nurse for more than 25 years, Smith had never picked up a paint brush until two years ago. Her art is now being collected internationally and one of her pieces hangs in Ireland's Department of Tourism.

The St. Helena Island resident will be the featured artist at the Red Piano Too Art Gallery's 18th annual Summer Show themed "Women and Water" at 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdayat 870 Sea Island Parkway on St. Helena Island.

"You just have to go through something and you learn," Smith said. "When trials come in life, you've just got to go through them to discover the good that will come out of your troubles. Creativity is born through adversity. This was my therapy."

Inspired by the marshes on Chowan Creek where she had fished and crabbed while growing up on St. Helena, all of her paintings include palmetto trees and most of them include water.

"Most of the women I paint are around water and most of the scenes (were of) water and the Gullah culture where I live," Smith said.

Smith was born in the same house where she grew up in the Scott Hill Farm area of St. Helena. After marrying Michael, who was a Marine, the two traveled the world with their two children. Upon Michael's retirement in the early 1990s, they returned to her home where she enjoys doting on her two granddaughters and continues working at Beaufort Naval Hospital.

"I never wanted to live anywhere else," said Smith, referring to the sights and sounds of her home which overlooks the marsh. She does most of her work in the family living room, but sometimes paints on her screened-in back porch where she gets most of her inspiration.

The theme of show, "Women and Water," came from Mary Mack, owner of Red Piano Too. Mack's home is on the water in the Coffin Point community on St. Helena, but her bedroom did not have a view of the water. She created one through a wall of paintings that feature water.

"I wanted to see what interesting perspectives other people would bring to (the theme)," Mack said.

Mack was immediately drawn to Smith's work.

Michael had taken a few of Smith's early pieces by the Red Piano Too and Mack was impressed. Beginning with 10-by-12-inch canvases, Smith's work has grown to sizes up to 24-by-36 inches and has become more playful. Her work "Rendezvous" was painted while thinking about herself and her husband on a boat. In "Waiting," a lady in a purple turban waits for her lover.

As Smith continued painting, she found the pain from her grief lessened and the act of painting became therapeutic. She said her painting "Girl in The Yellow Dress," which depicts a girl saying goodbye as she looks across the water at a departing bateaux, was her way of letting go.

"I finally came to terms with my loss and letting the past go," Smith said. "I recognized that this is what that piece is saying."