About

Mary Claire Smith’s work responds to landscape, atmosphere and the quiet rhythms found in nature. Rooted in the natural environment, it references botanical life and imagined worlds using abstracted forms and lines. Her aim is to evoke a deep sense of place and contemplation through the use of layered marks, textures and hand-worked surfaces. She studies patterns of growth and rhythm, dialogues of expansion and contraction, a return to something ancient and deep, wild and mysterious: of nature and of the body.

The work spans drawing, paint, print and collage, often re-using printed Japanese papers. This use of different papers is a feature of Mary Claire’s work and she employs techniques, such as frottage and layering with marks from brush, pen and pencil.

Mary Claire Smith has a postgraduates in Printmaking and Illustration from Central St Martins and holds a BA in Fine Art from Portsmouth Polytechnic. She is the owner/curator of Frank Gallery in Whitstable which opened in 2006, and has been a studio assistant and editioning printer at Paupers Press and Hope Sufferance Studios in London. She has taught Art and Design on Further Education courses in London, and worked as a freelance illustrator for a number of years.

Recent Shows
Frank Gallery, Whitstable: The Shape of Things (with Guy Rutter), 2026
Frank Gallery, Whitstable: From Ice Cream Hill to Long Rock, 2025
The Lido Stores, Margate: If Heaven Falls, the alternative Valentine’s exhibition, 2025
The Linden Hall Winter Show 2024–25 & 2025–26
The Lido Open, Margate, 2024
Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair/Imprint: 2023, 2024, 2025 (online), 2026 (online)
Hausprint London, Group Show, 2018

Representation
Columbia Road Gallery, London, showing at The Affordable Art Fair www.columbiaroadgallery.com
Kobi & Teal, Frome kobiandteal.co.uk
Frank Gallery, Whitstable www.frankworks.eu
Irving Gallery, Oxford www.irvinggallery.com