Valleyscapes – An Exhibition by Michael T. Smith

Valleyscapes, an exhibition of landscape artwork by Michael T. Smith, will be on view from August 3 through September 14 at The Rusty Brundage Memorial Art Gallery, located upstairs at The Cheshire Union in Canandaigua, NY. Please join us for an opening reception and meet-the-artist event on Sunday, August 3, from 2–4 PM. Exhibition Hours August 3 – September 14, 2025 Monday–Saturday: 10 AM – 5 PM Sunday: 12 PM – 5 PM Admission Free About the Artist Michael T. Smith is an artist based in the Finger Lakes region of New York. A self-taught painter, he draws from his background in construction to explore the depth of the landscape. His layered acrylic works often begin as field sketches and unfold through a process of building, scraping, and revealing. The resulting images are shaped as much by memory and mystery as by the land itself. Expressive and abstracted, Smith’s work is deeply rooted in the land that raised him. About the Work To live in a place long enough is to know its spirit. The paintings in Valleyscapes explore the hills of the Finger Lakes as more than just a landscape—they are resting places, thresholds, and beginnings. Valleys have long been seen as places of return and renewal, and this body of work examines that quiet but powerful pull. Each painting is made through a process of layering and excavation. Working in acrylics, oil pastels, and collage on wood panel, building up and scraping back day after day, allowing the image to emerge slowly through time. The result is not something planned, but something discovered. Often what appears feels like a memory or a revelation—familiar yet unexpected. These are not renderings of a specific place, but rather echoes of many places, shaped by years of walking, working, and sketching in the land. There’s a mystery in each painting—a sense that something sacred, even ancient, still lingers in the soil. The Seneca Nation, whose ancestral stories are rooted in these hills, speak of a spiritual birthplace here. The works in Valleyscapes are part of a longer conversation—between the visible and invisible, the known and the half-remembered. This collection is about return and renewal in the land—what it means to live within it, to listen to it, and to be quietly shaped by its rhythms, seasons, and silence.

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