online exhibition:
Carrie Mae Smith
If for Once We Could Do Nothing
October 9 - November 5, 2025
Inquire: HERE
Carrie Mae Smith’s studio in Upstate New York photographed by Jenny Riffle, 2025
“If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.”
- from “Keeping Quiet” by Pablo Neruda
Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present If for Once We Could Do Nothing, an online exhibition of paintings by Carrie Mae Smith. Taking its title and sensibility from Pablo Neruda’s poem “Keeping Quiet,” the exhibition considers what it means to be still in a time of noise—to listen, to look, and to remember the quiet labor of care.
In this body of work, Smith continues her engagement with still life painting as both a meditative and a subversive practice. Her compositions—tablecloths draped and folded, freshly picked peas in a basket, peaches glowing against a patterned cloth—speak softly but insistently. They are not nostalgic recreations of domesticity, but careful reanimations of the simplicity of nourishment and ritual. “Perhaps the earth can teach us,” Neruda writes, “as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive.” Smith’s paintings follow that instruction, seeking vitality in stillness and meaning in the everyday.
Many of her motifs emerge from materials steeped in memory. The tablecloths are borrowed from a friend’s collection, once belonging to her mother—intimate artifacts that hold the invisible record of gendered labor. Their floral prints ripple and distort across large canvases, their forms abstracting into fields of color and light. Through scale and attention, Smith restores significance to the overlooked. Her approach to still life aligns her with painters such as Jean Siméon Chardin, Giorgio Morandi, Janet Fish, and Lois Dodd, who each found quiet radicality in ordinary subjects. Yet Smith’s focus on cultivation and care places her within contemporary dialogues on sustainability, feminism, and the ethics of attention. Her paintings suggest that to look closely—to truly see—is itself a political act.
Smith reflects: “I’ve been thinking about time and beauty. How, a century ago, lives were shorter but perhaps more connected to land, to craft. Singer sewing machines adorned with floral inlays, mason jars of preserved tomatoes—a kind of beauty born not of abundance, but of care.” In her twenties, Smith left college to work on organic farms across southern Europe, including Spain, Italy, and France, as well as in Martha’s Vineyard, MA, inspired by Helen and Scott Nearing’s The Good Life. That period of physical labor and cultivation continues to shape her worldview. In the studio, she brings the same patience and attention that once guided her in the field: planting, tending, waiting. Amid technological acceleration and climate anxiety, painting what she has grown or gathered becomes, in her words, “a radical offering of presence.”
The paintings in If for Once We Could Do Nothing provide a moment of suspension. Without prescribed solutions or answers, they capture a feeling of stillness and for noticing the delicate pulse of life that persists beneath the surface of the digital era. In Smith’s hands, painting becomes a form of listening: to the earth, to memory, and to the quiet wisdom of the past. Beauty here does not clamor for attention. It resides, gently, in the act of paying attention itself.
Inquire: HERE
Carrie Mae Smith’s photographed by Jenny Riffle in her garden in Upstate New York, 2025
Carrie Mae Smith (b. 1974, Derby, CT) lives and works in Upstate New York. Inspired by antiques and food culture, Smith often paints her personal collections of vintage china, historic objects, and culinary delicacies. The daughter of a butcher, she supported her artistic practice early on working as a private chef on Martha’s Vineyard. Smith’s works serve as symbols of class, labor, friendship, tradition, love, and utility. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Delaware (2013). Smith has received numerous awards and grants, including the Clowes Fellowship Full Scholarship, Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Inc. Artist Grant; and the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation, Artist Grant. She has exhibited her work internationally and nationally, with recent solo exhibitions at Lowell Ryan Projects, Los Angeles, CA; the Locust Grove Estate, Poughkeepsie, NY; and The Berman Museum, Collegeville, PA, and her works are included in numerous private and public collections. Carrie Mae Smith currently lives and works in Gilbertsville, New York, where she serves on the faculty at SUNY Oneonta.
Carrie Mae Smith’s studio in Upstate New York photographed by Jenny Riffle, 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
Cherries, Draped Tablecloth, 2025
Oil on canvas with artist's frame
60 x 48 in
152.40 x 121.92 cm
CS-235
Carrie Mae Smith
Circling Swallowtail Kites, Draped Tablecloth, 2025
Oil on canvas with artist's frame
52.25 x 40 in
132.72 x 101.60 cm
CS-236
Carrie Mae Smith, Cherries, Draped Tablecloth (detail), 2025
Carrie Mae Smith’s studio in Upstate New York photographed by Jenny Riffle, 2025
Carrie Mae Smith, PA Peaches on Tea towel with Knife (detail), 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
Peas in Early Morning Light, 2025
Oil on aluminum panel
17 x 14 in
43.18 x 35.56 cm
CS-242
Carrie Mae Smith
PA Peaches on Tea towel with Knife, 2025
Oil on mylar mounted to panel
16 x 12 in
40.64 x 30.48 cm
CS-243
Carrie Mae Smith, Peas in Early Morning Light (detail), 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
Peas, from the garden, 2025
Oil on panel
10 x 7 in
25.40 x 17.78 cm
CS-246
Carrie Mae Smith’s studio in Upstate New York photographed by Jenny Riffle, 2025
Carrie Mae Smith, Two Espresso Cups (detail), 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
Fork, Knife and Spoon on Tea Towel, 2025
Oil on panel
14 x 12 in
35.56 x 30.48 cm
CS-254
Carrie Mae Smith
Pitcher with Lusterware Flowers and Spoon, 2025
Oil on aluminum panel
14 x 12 in
35.56 x 30.48 cm
CS-252
Carrie Mae Smith
Two Espresso Cups, 2025
Oil on panel
10 x 7 in
25.40 x 17.78 cm
CS-247
Carrie Mae Smith
Cookie Tin with Macarons, 2025
Oil on aluminum panel
17 x 14 in
43.18 x 35.56 cm
CS-253
Carrie Mae Smith, Cookie Tin with Macaroons (detail), 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
Wine Cap Mushrooms (foraged), 2025
Oil on aluminum
28 x 22 in
71.12 x 55.88 cm
CS-256
Carrie Mae Smith
Lemon in Blue Willow Bowl with Knife, 2025
Oil on panel
10 x 8 in
25.40 x 20.32 cm
CS-255
Carrie Mae Smith, Wine Cap Mushrooms (foraged) (detail), 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
Shelling Peas, from the garden, 2025
Oil on panel
8 x 9 in
20.32 x 22.86 cm
CS-248
Carrie Mae Smith
Cucumbers, Three Persian and One Kirby, from the garden, 2025
Oil on mylar mounted to panel
9 x 12 in
22.86 x 30.48 cm
CS-244
Carrie Mae Smith’s studio in Upstate New York photographed by Jenny Riffle, 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
Sunset in the Marsh, Folded Tablecloth, 2025
Oil on aluminum panel
32 x 24 in
81.28 x 60.96 cm
CS-237
Carrie Mae Smith
Lusterware Pitcher with Orange and Blue Flowers, 2025
Oil on aluminum
14 x 12 in
35.56 x 30.48 cm
CS-251
Carrie Mae Smith, Sunset in the Marsh, Folded Tablecloth (detail), 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
Plumbs and Mint on Checkered Tablecloth, 2025
Oil on mylar mounted to panel
12 x 9 in
30.48 x 22.86 cm
CS-245
Carrie Mae Smith
Peaches, 2021
Oil on ACM panel (Aluminum Composite Material)
32 x 24 in
81.28 x 60.96 cm
CS-097
Carrie Mae Smith, Plumbs and Mint on Checkered Tablecloth (detail), 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
Ramps, foraged, 2025
Oil on mylar mounted to panel
18 x 14 in
45.72 x 35.56 cm
CS-241
Carrie Mae Smith
Garlic Scapes, from the garden, 2025
Oil on aluminum panel
22 x 16 in
55.88 x 40.64 cm
CS-240
Carrie Mae Smith, Garlic Scapes, from the garden (detail), 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
First Beans, from the garden, 2022
Oil on Mylar mounted on panel
9 x 12 in
22.86 x 30.48 cm
CS-145
Carrie Mae Smith
Wild Chanterelle Mushrooms, foraged, 2025
Oil on panel
7.50 x 8 in
19.05 x 20.32 cm
CS-249
Carrie Mae Smith, Apples, Plums and Flowers, Folded Tablecloth (detail), 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
Apples, Plums and Flowers, Folded Tablecloth, 2025
Oil on aluminum panel
18 x 24 in
45.72 x 60.96 cm
CS-238
Carrie Mae Smith
Apples and Branches, Folded Tablecloth, 2025
Oil on aluminum panel
18 x 24 in
45.72 x 60.96 cm
CS-239
Carrie Mae Smith, Apples and Branches, Folded Tablecloth (detail), 2025
Carrie Mae Smith
Three Siblings (Daguerreotype), 2025
Oil on mylar mounted to panel
9 x 12 in
22.86 x 30.48 cm
CS-250
Carrie Mae Smith’s photographed by Jenny Riffle in her studio in Upstate New York, 2025