Candida Smith – Points of Power

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Candida and Rebecca Smith making a plaster horse, Bolton Landing, ca. 1961. Photograph by David Smith.
the points of power candida smith Where do you find the points of power? A child knows; an artist with the soul of a poet knows. When I was a child in the Adirondack Mountains, all the girls loved horses. One of my friends asked my father to show her how to draw a horse. He said, “No.” He never taught my sister or me how to draw or paint representationally. It limited the imagination. But my friend insisted until he could no longer refuse. He said, “You begin with the point of power.” The work in this exhibition appears to be my father’s most representational, but look some more. The artist, my father, David Smith, kept his distance. He gave his “models” no direction. The women here have no more concern for the artist or his view of them than would a horse or a leopard, and thus they have the same animal power and unconscious sensuality. They ask to be seen as something other than “figures.” Much of this work was created long after the photographs, in solitude, from my father’s point of power—his artistic identity—in the majestic mountaintop setting of his house and studio. When I was six years old and my sister seven, we asked our father for a horse. He said, “Of course, but you must first study and make a horse to scale.” We drew the bones, muscle groups (or we gave it our best effort), and learned where the movement came from; where the power was. He made an armature out of welded steel; we added muscles, flesh, and skin with plaster of Paris, old sheets, and burlap bags. Then, and only then, were we given Jo-Jo, our magnificent horse. 21
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Candida Smith – Points of Power

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