Art review: Energetic pair of painters show in Portland

**Matt Blackwell and Kathi Smith diverge in content, but share a vibe in their Greenhut Galleries show.**

Matt Blackwell and Kathi Smith might seem an unlikely pairing, but their paintings work together satisfyingly well.

Blackwell is a painterly wit. He lets it fly both in terms of his brush and his content. We might see a devil grumbling, a Venus skinny-dipping or a woman shaking out the contents of her purse with a scratched note in Spanish pointing out that the purse contains (or did) everything in the world. In short, Blackwell is high-energy fun.

Smith is an emerging artist worth watching. Her work is much closer to what we think of as traditional Maine painting: landscapes painted with the muscular urgency endemic to experienced artists working en plein air.

The common strand here already is the energy and boldness of the approaches of both painters. But there is more. The visual thread is that the two use somewhat similar palettes, and in particular, both have a rather chalky sense to their paint, an effect common to painters who use titanium white paint as a vehicle for color and lighting.

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