Sheila Luck & Mitchel Smith: Scenes From A Marriage

It’s with great pleasure we announce ‘Scenes from a Marriage’ a two-person show featuring the work of wife and husband abstract painters Sheila Luck and Mitchel Smith. The pair's artistic odyssey started when they met in art school 45 years ago and since that time the couple have been an active part of the Edmonton art scene, their artistic practice producing markedly different takes on abstract painting.  

"Lately I’ve been interested in Gerard Grisey. In an interview he talks about how different composers’ music can be conceived in different ways.

One way is that a composition can be seen as a discourse, a declamation.  Another way is that a composition can be seen as a state of sound. Montiverdi and Boulez are in the former category, Ockeghem and Xenakis in the latter. A music that says things, versus a music that says, ‘This is the world’.

If the analogy works with visual art, it seems to me that Sheila’s (and Courbet’s) pictures are in the former category and mine (and Rogier van der Weyden’s) are in the latter. A discourse in paint vs a ‘state of paint’ (which, incidentally, is a very good title for a show). This is not an idea about quality, but an idea about how a work of art is perceived.

Time will tell, as it always does, if these pictures are significant or lasting, but I am sure that both of us have made a serious effort. And that is where all the fun is."  -MS March 2024