Laurie Smith

'[...] In Private lives, Laurie Smith paints scenes that collage fantasy, history and the London painter’s own life. Queer history and contemporary nightlife blend. The show captures a moment in motion, romantically. They are scenes, unstaged, where subjects contest for focus.

Smith’s style draws on the moodiness and expansive vastness of the scenes rendered by Francisco de Goya. The title, in fact, of Boy Staring at an Apparition, is taken from the 1824-5 work by him. In that painting, a boy, softly rendered, gasps, open mouthed, at a figure of ghostly lightness. In Smith’s iteration, two dancers tousle on a stage. In the audience, boys stand, in denim, transfixed.'

—Excerpt from a text written by Thea McLachlan