Heart's Content AP/9

About Heart's Content AP/9

This indoor table top bronze sculpture features a man sitting on an overturned canoe.

Roch Smith is a Canadian artist whose sculptural work explores ideas of scale, work, play and disequilibrium. He is highly regarded for his thoughtful, provocative and often playful approach to sculpture. Smith likes to work in series. This is one of several smaller pieces cast in a rich dark bronze that uses the form of a canoe, an iconic image which brings to mind the solitude of the Canadian wilderness. Smith grew up on Vancouver Island spending leisure time sailing on the ocean but one of his uncles had a canoe that he’d put on the car and take down to a nearby lake. That early exposure to the simplicity of paddling a canoe and the peace experienced gliding through pristine waters stayed with Smith.
With Heart’s Content, Smith is again thinking of the sanctity of rare moments of quiet contemplation. The male figure is sitting on an overturned canoe in a “quiet, singular moment, perhaps looking out onto a lake or forest scene.”

“The canoe does speak to something quintessentially Canadian as at some time many of us have or will have the opportunity to be in an environment where paddling a canoe (either expertly or poorly) on a body of water grounds you into the world.” Roch Smith

Roch Smith received a BFA (Honours Sculpture) from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (ECIAD - 1997) and an MFA from York University (2003). A teacher as well as an artist, he has taught classes at the University of Waterloo, ECIAD and York University.
He currently manages and operates the bronze and aluminum foundry at York University. Roch Smith has exhibited throughout Canada and in the US. His work is included in private, corporate and museum collections.