58 maconmagazine.com | February/March 2025
Cedric Smith's unrelenting gaze shows that
portraiture can be revelatory
STORY BY CANDICE DYER | PHOTOS BY MATT ODOM
M Y
P A I N T I N G S
A R E M Y
D I A R Y
F
luffy hydrangeas bloom profusely, and you
can practically taste the velvety peaches
in the work of artist Cedric Smith. In their
midst, Black faces – proud, transfixing –
gaze back at you.
Smith, who lives in Macon, is part of a vanguard
of African American artists who are exploring and
reclaiming their regional roots, playing with down-
home imagery to upgrade and retrofit a fresher,
more inclusive New South. Beyonce went country.
Textile artist Wini McQueen grows her own cotton
and weaves it to wondrous effect. The lilting songs of
Adia Victoria feature magnolias ("That flower is not
just for white Southerners," she says).
Smith usually renders haunting countenances
– some are self-portraits – in old-timey, vintage
settings, rich in cultural symbolism. He uses a
spatula to make his paint look weathered. Wherever
Black people were excluded in the pop culture of
an often painful and whitewashed past, he asserts
their presence, their contributions, their unassailable
dignity. Every daub of paint is an act of restitution.
"African American people were written out of so
much in advertising and the media and elsewhere,"
he says. "Even now, you can walk through a museum
RIGHT We
caught up with
Smith in his East
Macon studio.
He's working
on images
featuring women
and girls for a
fall exhibition
at Wesleyan
College.
