May Smith

May Anne Smith (18 June 1906 – 24 July 1988) was a New Zealand painter, engraver, textile designer and textile printer. Smith was part of a movement of women who were instrumental in bringing new artistic ideas to New Zealand and influencing the art of the country.

Early life May Smith was born in Simla, India, in 1906 where British India had its summer government headquarters. Smith's father was Sir Joseph Smith, a civil engineer. Because the procedures included long periods of enforced inactivity, her grandmother encouraged her to use this time to learn to paint. She taught herself fabric designing and printing, using wood or linoleum cut blocks. She had some success selling her hand-printed fabric to boutique stores such as Peter Jones and Heal and Sons but did no repeat business. In 1950, Smith and her husband moved to Gisborne, where they set up work as commercial fabric printers. In 1952 their marriage was dissolved and Smith returned to Auckland. Smith taught part-time at the Auckland Teachers Training College in the 1950s before teaching art full-time at the Epsom Girls' Grammar School and illustrating for the School Journal.

She continued to exhibit her hand-printed fabrics in group shows with the artist A. R. D. Fairburn and her work sold in a number of Auckland and Wellington shops including the Helen Hitchings Gallery. Smith eventually became disillusioned with textile design, feeling that it wasn't possible to compete with mass-produced fabrics, but she continued to incorporate textile design into her work. She also introduced her students, among them Robin White, to the possibilities of screenprinting.

She retired from the art department at Epsom Girls' Grammar School in 1965 and in 1967 moved permanently to the Coromandel. In 1974 she married John Fowler who was very helpful and supportive of her art, creating an "ideal environment for a painter to work in" for her. She continued to paint and exhibit regularly in Thames, Hamilton, Coromandel, Auckland and Dunedin up until the early 1980s. May Smith died in 1988.

List of works Works in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa Works in the collection of Auckland War Memorial Museum