Dayarne Smith is a visual artist based in Muswellbrook NSW. She started painting in early 2022, creating abstract paintings that are layered and textural.

Dayarne grew up in a home filled with eclectic art, textiles and mementos her parents collected on their overseas travels. Bold, quirky and abstract, each piece told a story and added to the personality of the family home. This sparked a life-long love of colour, texture and playfulness that now finds its way onto her canvas.

Process-driven and intuitive, much of Dayarne’s work starts with the colour palette. As the painting begins to emerge, it’s only then she starts painting more deliberately. It’s a process of surrender. Trying to force the composition too soon leads to frustration.

Depth and texture is achieved with multiple layers and a variety of mediums. Dayarne loves the freedom of mixed media art, which simply means using more than one medium to create her paintings. She works mostly with acrylic paint, but loves the addition of crayons, pencils, charcoal, spray paint, oil pastels and oil sticks to achieve interesting compositions.