Jennifer Smith Gallery 

About Jennifer Smith

J. Leigh Smith is a Northern Virginia visual artist working primarily in acrylic and charcoal. Her work explores people, emotion, memory, and the quiet tension between what is revealed and what remains unspoken.

Smith's painting 53 was selected for the 2026 regional juried exhibition Metamorphosis at Alliance Gallery. Her artwork has also been exhibited and sold through Northern Virginia galleries and community exhibitions, and she is represented online by Nepenthe Gallery. She is a member of the Fairfax Art League and Springfield Art Guild.

Through her ongoing Acrylic Atelier, Smith continues developing a cohesive body of work while studying material, light, narrative, and the language of painting.

Artist Statement

Much of my work begins with a feeling I cannot yet name. I explore people, emotion, memory, and place - not to explain them completely, but to hold the moment when something is changing.

I work primarily in acrylic and charcoal. Acrylic allows me to build and disturb a surface through layering, scraping, sanding, lifting, and glazing; charcoal offers a different kind of immediacy and vulnerability. I am especially drawn to quiet tension: an expression that can be read more than one way, the space between recognition and response, and the traces our earlier selves leave behind.

Whether the work is figurative or narrative, I want it to remain open enough for viewers to recognize something from their own lives within it.

Website: www.jleighsmithstudio.com

Instagram: @jleighsmithart