Home Journal Artists on Mitchell: Leslie Smith III

Artists on Mitchell: Leslie Smith III

Leslie Smith sits at a table layered with canvas, in front of abstract panels, and two large speakers. He is a Black man with medium light skin tone and dark beard, and wears glasses, a cap, and a paint-splattered button-up.
Leslie Smith III in his studio. Photo by Jim Escalante.

Joan Mitchell’s influence on my practice is both conceptual and formal, particularly in my relationship to abstraction, emotion, and the act of painting itself. Her expressive, uninhibited brushwork, and the emotional weight carried in her canvases deeply inspire my practice, though interpreted through my own experiences and concerns.

In a museum gallery hangs Salut Tom, a large abstract quadriptych painting. Yellow vertical marks make a sort of sky, and stippled white, green, and blue marks gather in a central, horizontal form.
Joan Mitchell, Salut Tom, 1978. Oil on canvas, 110 7/16 x 316 x 1 1/2 inches (280.5 x 802.6 x 3.81 cm). Collection of National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. © Estate of Joan Mitchell.

My first exposure to a Joan Mitchell painting was as a high school art student wandering around the National Gallery in Washington, DC, where I encountered Mitchell’s ‘Salut Tom.’ The painting is robust and impressive, but most notably, I remember it being accessible and inviting to explore—it wasn’t austere. I started to appreciate abstraction that day. Twelve years later, I would explore my attraction to it.

Mitchell's work stands apart. What resonates most with me is her remarkable ability to turn feeling into form. I relate to this aspect of her practice because I’m interested in using abstraction to explore emotional states, psychological complexity, and personal narratives, especially as they relate to my identity and experience as a Black man.

Night Swim, Don’t Let Go is an shaped abstract painting composed of a pair of black rounded rectangles, one with a linear texure. Two similarly shaped rounded polygons move across the surface, one with gestures of black and white paint, and the other in stippled color.
Leslie Smith III, Night Swim, Don’t Let Go, 2023. Oil on shaped canvas, 40 x 39.5 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Chart Gallery.

I appreciate how Mitchell evokes sentiment in her paintings, and this is partly why I perceive her works as deeply human. Through this understanding, I’ve come to view Mitchell’s abstracts not as an escape from reality, but as ways to engage with it on a deeper level.

Leslie Smith III is an artist based in Madison, Wisconsin, and a 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellow.