The Museum School of Boston

Self-Portrait Pairs

Smarkusz used an illustrative style for this 4 color Aquatint, as compared to the more painterly "Boston Common" prints shown next  (the same Kiosk is pictured in both series, but from different sides of the park).
 

Vincent lived on Joy Street which terminates at the park entrance just two blocks south of his apartment. He spent many hours "down the Common", day and night, enjoying the space, the light, and studying the people with sketches. The image above is one of several 4 color Aquatint offset prints he created showing the park in autumn.  Smarkusz produced them in 1951 while attending the Museum School of Boston.
 

Smarkusz's "AAA" paintings (Abstracts in Acrylic on Aluminum) are a combination of surrealist decalcomania and grattage, whereby layers of thick paint are applied and then scraped away to reveal interesting effects.
See also his other Abstract Expressionist Experimentations

Smarkusz created a series of abstracts in acrylic on aluminum - his "AAA's" - to express metaphysical reality as a geometrically layered phenomenon. He first rolled pigments onto the metallic surface in layers of color, and applied other forms of Decalcomania.  He then removed the wet pigments via Grattage, using variously sized scrapers with various maneuvers, to reveal the shiny metallic substrate below.  The AAA's were V's contribution to Abstract Expressiionism in 1952. See "Technic-Surreal"
 

Vincent experimented with different materials, tools, techniques and styles while exploring drawing, painting, and sculpture at the Museum School in Boston.
 

Several pastel drawings created on black superfine sandpaper are another example of the experimental nature of this artist where materials are concerned .......

Smarkusz began using Surrealist Automatism and Dreamwork to access his deeper subconscious imagery.
 

"Fusionism" - a conceptually and visually abstract fusion of Expressionism with Surrealism, began to emerge in Smarkusz's work of the early 1950's.  See "Fusionism" and Interpreting "The Nest" for an introduction to this obscure style which fuses sensual forms with mythical themes and abstract symbolism.

Vincent painted in the top floor loft of his Joy Street apartment in Boston for 23 years, from 1951 until his death in 1974.  Beginning in the mid-1960s he escaped the summer heat of the city to paint out of a renovated red barn in the rural Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts.
 

By the mid 1950s Smarkusz had fully developed his early "Fusionism" style of painting.  He had been working as a night watchmen while creating his art by day.

Vincent worked as a night watchman in the new Jordan Marsh & Co. department store built in 1950.  In this photo the storefront is decorated for Christmas 1954.