Nancy Willis Smith is an artist born near Chicago and currently living in New York City.  Her work explores both the harmony and inherent discords between man and nature, reality and perception, technology and myth.

Smith’s mixed media canvases and her assemblages and dioramas juxtapose surreal images in striking settings with beautiful textures, colors and structural backgrounds. A defining characteristic of her work is the inclusion of curious and extraordinary objects (including fossilized ammonites, monkey ferns, old piano parts and old chandelier orbs) collected on her treks to Nepal, India, Russia and Eastern Europe.  Many pieces, including her Whirling Dervishes series, are inspired by extraordinary events she experienced while living and working throughout the Middle East and North Africa before and during the Arab Spring.