An Earthing
Solo show
Tabula Rasa Gallery Beijing
29 November 2025 – 10 January 2026
Solo show
Tabula Rasa Gallery Beijing
29 November 2025 – 10 January 2026
Between Craft and Art: The Working Rhythms of Cheri Smith
Cheri Smith’s personal life and working rhythms further illuminate the foundations of her artistic worldview. Alongside her practice as an artist, Smith works at Bellerby & Co. Globemakers. In contrast to the fast-tracked tempo of contemporary life, globe-making is a craft that demands slowness, patience, and exacting technical discipline, qualities that resonate deeply with Smith’s personal motivations in art. Rather than constraining one another, these two professional identities function in a complementary relationship. The meticulous attention to detail and control required in globe-making satisfies what Smith describes as a “technical itch,” allowing her artistic practice to become more open, experimental, and expansive. This contrast between modes of working generates a productive tension: long hours spent painting globes indoors prompt a desire to work more physically and intuitively elsewhere, often outdoors, drawing from direct engagement with nature.
The act of globe-making also reinforces Smith’s ongoing fascination with the earth as both subject and material presence. Her favourite globes to paint depict the planet from a satellite perspective, rendered in naturalistic hues that closely align with her sustained interest in and connection to the ground, as articulated in her exhibition An Earthing through both colour and subject matter. For Smith, globe-making is not merely technical labour but a connection to an ancient tradition: maps are applied strip by strip, coloured by hand, and handled with meticulous sensitivity to material. This temporal layering, in which contemporary practice intersects with historical craft, mirrors her broader engagement with art history and conceptions of time.
Smith’s relationship with nonhuman life is most intimately expressed through her dog, Fig, who occupies a recurring and multifaceted role in her paintings. Fig resists fixed categorisation, appearing variously as dog, deer, predator, or prey, a visual ambiguity that Smith consciously cultivates. This blurring reflects her interest in multiplicity and shifting perspectives: Fig’s capacity for speed, aggression, fear, and tenderness becomes a mirror for human complexity. By painting animals in analogous poses, Smith destabilises hierarchical distinctions between species. In attempting to inhabit the animals she depicts, Smith approaches painting as an empathetic act, one that seeks not representation alone, but understanding across forms of life
Download PDF
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Cheri Smith (b. 1991, Essex, UK) currently lives and works in London. Her work explores themes of animality, embodiment, wildness, and strangeness. Cheri’s painted world and its symbolic elements are deeply rooted in the principles of nature. Earthy colours and a sensitivity to natural details and textures draw attention to the organic cycles of life. Animals and plants recur as lively symbols, weaving individual elements into a collective narrative.
Through her unique lens, Cheri addresses complex themes such as life and death, reaching toward the origins and continuities of existence. She paints with oil, egg tempera, and glue distemper on various supports including canvas, wood panels, and book covers. Beyond traditional techniques, Smith employs a distinctive method of layering thin, tonal glazes to create a subtle luminosity. Her paintings are not merely individual images but living components that blur the boundaries between reality and imagination.
Cheri Smith received her BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Norwich University of the Arts in 2013, then completed her post-graduate degree in Drawing from Royal Drawing School in 2018, where she was awarded the Trustees Prize. She has been a recipient of residencies at Hanover Grange, Jamaica (2019), Borgo Pignano, Italy (2020), and Dumfries House, Scotland (2022). Her recent exhibitions include: An Earthing, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Solo, Beijing, 2025); Deja Vu, Galleria Annarumma (Napoli, 2024); Swallowing Figments, Fortnight Institute (Solo, New York, 2024); Four-Folds, Lychee One (London, 2024); Here be Dragons, James Freeman Gallery (London, 2023); The Consolation of Clinamen, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023); Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize (online, 2023); It’s Better to Be Cats Than Be Loved, Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2022); Bookworks, James Freeman Gallery (London, 2022); Nine Lives, Fortnight Institute (New York, 2021); Winter Solstice 2020 Art, Books & Ephemera, Fortnight Institute (New York, 2020); The Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, the Mall Galleries (London, 2019); and Best of the Drawing Year at Christie’s (London, 2018), among others.
Cheri Smith’s personal life and working rhythms further illuminate the foundations of her artistic worldview. Alongside her practice as an artist, Smith works at Bellerby & Co. Globemakers. In contrast to the fast-tracked tempo of contemporary life, globe-making is a craft that demands slowness, patience, and exacting technical discipline, qualities that resonate deeply with Smith’s personal motivations in art. Rather than constraining one another, these two professional identities function in a complementary relationship. The meticulous attention to detail and control required in globe-making satisfies what Smith describes as a “technical itch,” allowing her artistic practice to become more open, experimental, and expansive. This contrast between modes of working generates a productive tension: long hours spent painting globes indoors prompt a desire to work more physically and intuitively elsewhere, often outdoors, drawing from direct engagement with nature.
The act of globe-making also reinforces Smith’s ongoing fascination with the earth as both subject and material presence. Her favourite globes to paint depict the planet from a satellite perspective, rendered in naturalistic hues that closely align with her sustained interest in and connection to the ground, as articulated in her exhibition An Earthing through both colour and subject matter. For Smith, globe-making is not merely technical labour but a connection to an ancient tradition: maps are applied strip by strip, coloured by hand, and handled with meticulous sensitivity to material. This temporal layering, in which contemporary practice intersects with historical craft, mirrors her broader engagement with art history and conceptions of time.
Smith’s relationship with nonhuman life is most intimately expressed through her dog, Fig, who occupies a recurring and multifaceted role in her paintings. Fig resists fixed categorisation, appearing variously as dog, deer, predator, or prey, a visual ambiguity that Smith consciously cultivates. This blurring reflects her interest in multiplicity and shifting perspectives: Fig’s capacity for speed, aggression, fear, and tenderness becomes a mirror for human complexity. By painting animals in analogous poses, Smith destabilises hierarchical distinctions between species. In attempting to inhabit the animals she depicts, Smith approaches painting as an empathetic act, one that seeks not representation alone, but understanding across forms of life
Download PDF
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Cheri Smith (b. 1991, Essex, UK) currently lives and works in London. Her work explores themes of animality, embodiment, wildness, and strangeness. Cheri’s painted world and its symbolic elements are deeply rooted in the principles of nature. Earthy colours and a sensitivity to natural details and textures draw attention to the organic cycles of life. Animals and plants recur as lively symbols, weaving individual elements into a collective narrative.
Through her unique lens, Cheri addresses complex themes such as life and death, reaching toward the origins and continuities of existence. She paints with oil, egg tempera, and glue distemper on various supports including canvas, wood panels, and book covers. Beyond traditional techniques, Smith employs a distinctive method of layering thin, tonal glazes to create a subtle luminosity. Her paintings are not merely individual images but living components that blur the boundaries between reality and imagination.
Cheri Smith received her BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Norwich University of the Arts in 2013, then completed her post-graduate degree in Drawing from Royal Drawing School in 2018, where she was awarded the Trustees Prize. She has been a recipient of residencies at Hanover Grange, Jamaica (2019), Borgo Pignano, Italy (2020), and Dumfries House, Scotland (2022). Her recent exhibitions include: An Earthing, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Solo, Beijing, 2025); Deja Vu, Galleria Annarumma (Napoli, 2024); Swallowing Figments, Fortnight Institute (Solo, New York, 2024); Four-Folds, Lychee One (London, 2024); Here be Dragons, James Freeman Gallery (London, 2023); The Consolation of Clinamen, Tabula Rasa Gallery (Beijing, 2023); Ruth Borchard Self Portrait Prize (online, 2023); It’s Better to Be Cats Than Be Loved, Tabula Rasa Gallery (London, 2022); Bookworks, James Freeman Gallery (London, 2022); Nine Lives, Fortnight Institute (New York, 2021); Winter Solstice 2020 Art, Books & Ephemera, Fortnight Institute (New York, 2020); The Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize, the Mall Galleries (London, 2019); and Best of the Drawing Year at Christie’s (London, 2018), among others.
Tabula Rasa Gallery (London)
Unit One, 99 East Road,
Hoxton, London
N1 6AQ
Unit One, 99 East Road,
Hoxton, London
N1 6AQ
Tuesday - Saturday 12:00 - 18:00 | Sunday - Monday Closed
© 2022 Tabula Rasa Gallery