Angel
Anton says about the relationship between art and the individual artist’s experience of reality. “ Art is not to render the visible but to render visible,” he asserts, and his art achieves this in many ways.
“Angel”, an exquisite bronze sculpture draws our attention, through the delicate bronze scribble-like wings as if the artist began making the sculpture, through an inspired scribble – resulting in the contained feminine solid bronze form of an angel. One’s eye follows through, coming to rest on her delicate feet, as quickly as we rest our gaze on her feet, one’s eye moves upward over the angel, heavenward toward the wings, which project into the atmospheric space surrounding. The play of positive and negative shape, keeps one aesthetically engaged, as we ponder the narrative of the angel.
Anton links these words to the Angel sculpture “The sentinel bird looks over my head and invariable – the angel inhabits my soul … The angel inhabits my soul.”– Anton Smit
We are left to ponder the narrative between the nature of an angel and that of the sentinel bird, which is especially alert to predators.“Spoken verse, the echoes of emotive lyrics, and the rasping of sculptures in progress are customary sounds emitted from his studio. Larger than life, Anton Smit is the embodiment of poetry “
