A Lifetime of Sketchbooks
Serena Smart travels the world, as well as her everyday South London environs, with a small box for her tools of the trade: coloured pencils, a pen, a small box of watercolour paints and a water brush, which is prone to explode at high altitude, she told me. With these few items, she documents and logs her life, much like other Gen Zs take photos with their phones to do the same job, writes Michael Holland.
This has been something she has been doing for 20 of her 26 years. ‘It started when my mum, a bookbinder, brought home a little bound book for her, which was the start of a lifetime of sketching wherever she might find herself. The colourful sketches often have varying amounts of text to describe the day, the event, the date, the place, etc. Some have nothing written; those have to tell their own story.
Serena told me how she would find somewhere to sit and just sketch away. Hence, pictures from Peckham to Peru, Camberwell to the Camino de Santiago, round the world to round the corner, Tower Bridge to somewhere beginning with T.
Over the years, the sketchbooks piled up in a cupboard, only to come out to be shown like holiday photos to visiting family friends. Then, one of the friends, who ‘knows about art’, said she should have an exhibition of her sketchbooks.
Hence her exhibition called ‘Can I Have A Look?’ The phrase is one often asked by passers-by when they see Serena at work in the street. And what a lovely collection it is. She has chosen over one hundred of her favourite watercolours for our delectation. A show of art where you can see the development of her work over time; actually watch Serena Smart evolve into a very creative woman.
The artist’s sketchbooks are all on display, as well as that very first book from mum, where you see the innocence of a six-year-old child, who didn’t know Cockney rhyming slang when she called one of her early self-portraits, ‘Me Dreaming of Having a Pony’.
Just before I left, Serena told me she had just come back from the Edinburgh Fringe, where her comedy show, Little Miss Sunshine, had received great reviews! That was information I was not expecting at all.
As soon as I got home, I found several clips of Serena at comedy gigs, and she is very funny. She has been a finalist in some prestigious comedy competitions, and the only bad review I could find was from her brother…
The Art of Isolation, 47 Upper Floor, Surrey Quays Shopping Centre, Redriff Road, London, SE16 7LL until September 5th.
