Kendra Elstad Smith is a Scandinavian African-American artist born and raised in Los Angeles. Her training in painting began as a child at the Brentwood Art Center and continued at the University of Michigan’s School of Art and Design in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She studied methods of classical paint mediums: oil paint, egg tempera, and gouache at Istituto Lorenzo de Medici in Florence, Italy. Later, she received her BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, with a focus in painting. Kendra Elstad Smith is an artist, educator, and mother of two living in Santa Monica, California. She paints en plein air with watercolor paint. The artist and the medium dynamically dialogue in the process of painting colors suspended in water. Her soft, refreshing washes of pigment interact with the negative space of the paper, revealing a mutable presence in the work. After the pigment settles, what is left from the activity is the trace of what took place, the distinctive marks made during that process. These residual marks, evidence of a gesture in time, communicate infinite and ambiguous inquiries about what has happened and what might next occur. This time-based process evokes the temporal qualities of watercolor paint. Landscapes, portraiture, and botanical still life inspire her paintings, drawings, and handmade cards.

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