Aynslee Moon Smithee
Huntsville, AL
I am an artist and art educator living and creating in Huntsville, Alabama.
Message
Aynslee Moon Smithee is an artist, mother, and teacher. She has a B.F.A. from the University of Mississippi and an M.F.A. from the University of Alabama. During the week she teaches preschool, elementary, and middle school art at Holy Spirit Catholic School.
Aynslee creates art inspired by her family, especially the imaginative play and interactions of her two children, and her quiet observations of nature, color, light, and form in the spaces around her. As a part-time local Pastor of Liturgical Arts at Valley UMC, she sometimes creates artwork that illuminates the liturgy of the church and inspires others to seek truth and beauty as they walk their own spiritual paths.
Statement
My work explores familial relationships through the lenses of motherhood, spirituality, and imagination. Since choosing the path of the artist’s life in the second grade, I have given birth to two children, one in the middle of a pandemic. I have taken on and found myself in many roles: daughter, sister, partner, mother, teacher, and preacher, and my newest one, aunt. But I have always found my truest self in the role of artist, and so it is my studio practice that has always kept me grounded.
I draw inspiration from my children, from the brush of their soft cheeks and the way their little fingers intertwine with mine, to the wild and wonderful stories that my third grader loves to tell. I draw inspiration from their vulnerability and their bravery, and from the push and pull of trying to teach them these things while trying to be more vulnerable and braver myself. I am inspired by the observations that I squeeze in when I can find empty spaces, in between the mothering and the teaching. The color of the sky, the fluid structure of a wilting flower, the way two shapes intertwine. To see, to feel, and to respond, to all these parts, is what binds my spirit together. It is my way of praying.
Lately I have been painting and drawing images of my daughter in her world of imagination combined with images of natural forms, such as flowers, seashells, and bird nests. I have also been playing with layering and arranging the silhouettes that come from these images. I have used a combination of charcoal, gelli print layers, and spray paint to build up evocative texture in the negative spaces. I have also begun to build abstract paper formations using the paint on the palette that is left over after I have painted the representational imagery.
This way of working is interconnected, and it keeps my curiosity alive and moving. In the Judeo-Christian creation story, one human form was made from the rib of another, so in the same way each piece of my art begins from the bones of another. The shapes, the colors, the light and shadow, are laid down, broken apart, then revived, over and over, creating new stories.