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West Bend Exhibition

Leslie Smith III

Leave Your Baggage at the Door

August 1–October 11

MOWA | West Bend

About the Exhibition

Smith invites you to (please) leave your baggage at the door—to release biases and expectations—to enter with open eyes and an open mind.

Opening Party | August 8

Leave Your Baggage at the Door presents 22 paintings, ranging in scale from the intimate to the monumental, by Leslie Smith III. Created between 2010 and 2024, these works mark an important moment in Smith’s career as he moved away from old expectations and habits from a life in New York City to his new home in Wisconsin—granting himself permission to begin painting in an entirely new, more abstract way. Seen together for the first time, this focused retrospective traces his progression through 15 years of studio practice, revealing color, shape, and textural motifs not previously considered.

Smith’s evolving approach to abstraction is seen in his move away from painting on traditional, four-cornered canvases to shaped works that challenge spatial perception. His most recent works culminate as multi-canvas mixed-media constructions that fracture and expand the picture plane. Smith pushes the illusionistic and optical possibilities of painting while testing its physical boundaries. Through abstraction, Smith’s work seeks to simultaneously communicate his personal narrative while eliciting a universal emotional response from the viewer. His paintings offer a sensory and conceptual experience, pairing vivid compositions with evocative titles that invite reflection and interpretation.

Smith grew up in metropolitan Washington, DC, and now lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He earned his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and his MFA from Yale University. Smith is currently professor of drawing and painting and Art Department Chair at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Smith invites you to (please) leave your baggage at the door—to release biases and expectations—to enter with open eyes and an open mind. The act of close looking offers a quiet portal to emotion, empathy, and reflection.

Image to the left: Leslie Smith III, Bang, 2024