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About VaL

VaL Smit is a South African artist and poet based in Cape Town. She writes ekphrastic poetry per artwork created and uses various media in portraying images that she feels fitting to deliver the message of the words she pens down. She focuses on the inner turmoil experienced by our disconnectedness from nature and each other. Her work has been published in various online journals including GloMag India, The Chachalaka Review,  The West Review,  The Raconteur Review and Literary Garland.

“As a Visual Artist and Poet, the goal of my artwork is to find psychological meaning in the most mundane. A walk in the park, shattering winter winds, spring at its most magnificent moment, flowers and smells, all creating poetical imagery smoothly transferring the audience into another world.

My artistic practice questions the ambivalence that I experience between the connection and disconnection of humankind and nature. It is in this state of questioning, of feeling vulnerable and exposed, that I explore the comfortable and the awkward, the controlled and uncontrolled, the familiar and the mundane. It is at the meeting point of these dualities, where the pairings slip and merge, that I situate my work.

There are no defined steps in my creation process. I take inspiration from various occurrences in everyday life. Sometimes it happens during conversation with total strangers, visual stimuli from a natural phenomenon, or a single word. Sometimes I visualise the artwork first and that inspires the poetry, other times I write the poetry and that inspires the visual art.

I endeavour to write poems that speak to my audience at a molecular level, which challenge the intellect and draw on emotion at the same time, but always remain in dialogue with myself.

I try to create sharp, crisp images, through engaging metaphors, using the ordinary, the grandiose, or the hauntingly beautiful, in unpretentious compositions.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row content_placement=”middle”][vc_column][vc_single_image image=”5257″ img_size=”large” alignment=”center”][/vc_column][/vc_row]