"Certain pieces...stand apart. Dinah Maxwell Smith's simplified, luminous, close-in views of a stark French courtyard door, a shadow and an adjacent window are small gems..."  

Phyllis Braff, The New York Times

"Paintings of nostalgia and charm...a generally muted palette and a tersely handled technique combine to make these evocations as pictorially strong as they are visually endearing." 

John Gruen, New York Magazine

"Freely applied, charged brushwork that tends to emphasize the simplification of form...there is a simultaneous sense of intimacy and distance caused by the combination of close-up and blurred vision that is heightened by the off-hand, casual and seemingly candid compositions. The color is fresh and serendipitous."

Ruth Bass, Art News

"In the loose painterly style characteristic of the Long Island School, American artist Dinah Maxwell Smith uses a sensual handling of paint to depict naturalistic environments.  Her descriptive brushwork helps create a visual statement defining color and light - perhaps better phrased 'color as light.'

As did renowned painter (and fellow Southamptonite) Fairfield Porter, Dinah Maxwell Smith utilizes common motifs of everyday life as vehicles of expression... As viewers we are instantly comfortable with these works, they aesthetically please while retaining artistic integrity.  

Skillfully handled, Smith's brushwork carries the eye in and around the canvas uniquely recording each image. We see an obvious love of the paint itself, the individual studies becoming almost abstract in handling.  Her use of color is refreshing - each object is meticulously described in varying shades of the same hue placed directly next to each other.  Similar to the Impressionist painters, Smith avoids the use of black;  rather, contrast is achieved by the use of color opposites." 

Dinah Maxwell Smith studied painting at L'Académie Julian in Paris and received her BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design.  She was also a participant in a Master Workshop with Wayne Thiebaud in Santa Fe, NM. Her works are represented in the permanent collections of the Bridgeport (CT) Museum of Art, the Rhode Island School of Design, JPMorgan/Chase (NYC), the Union League Club (NYC) and the Laurance Rockefeller Collection.  

She currently lives and works in the New York City area.