watercolour on paper
mounted, framed and under glass

Provenance: Attributed and titled on Fine Art Society, Old Bond Street, London exhibition label verso, dated September 1997. Artist's label verso with address of 70 Hamilton Place, Aberdeen.
Note: Ian McKenzie Smith’s work shows his continuing commitment to a distinctly personal brand of landscape based abstraction: a subtle evocative way of painting that owes something to Eastern traditions, as well as the American colour-field painters of the 1950’s. A travelling scholarship took him to Paris where he met the Japanese artist Kenzo Okada and encountered Zen philosophy. An oriental sense of balance and calligraphic finesse has been a feature of his work ever since. Awarded the OBE and CBE for services to art, he was director of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums for some thirty years, is Past President of the Royal Scottish Academy, Past President of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolours and a former Trustee of the National Galleries of Scotland. Numerous works are in many public collections including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, The Government Art Collection, Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Perth Art Galleries, and in private collections in the UK, Europe, North America and Japan. Ian McKenzie Smith's work rarely appears at auction.