On the one hand, the images have an obvious cosmic, visionary, and even psychedelic potency. They seem almost like illustrations of visionary archetypes, as the faithful transcription of cosmic or ritual truths. But at the same time, they are very deliberately reflexive and phenomenologically adaptive paintings. Smith constructs them to cunningly include the viewer and the viewer’s process of perception. The paintings attempt to make the process of becoming concrete. In this way they are as much like Cézanne, Agnes Martin or Bridget Riley as they are like surrealist or symbolist art. The viewer’s flowing process of perception interacts with the images to create what Smith calls a “third space.”