Margaux Smith's paintings explore layers, excavating strata of both personal and collective cultural memory. Smith begins her paintings with a collage ground made up of magazines and books. These found images provide the background for densely textured oil paintings which Smith produces through a durational practice in which many layers of paint are applied, sanded or scraped away, and reapplied. This process of excavation leads to a gradual revelation of faces, bodies and interior spaces. The resulting paintings explore family and intimate relationships, composite portraits with multiple conflicting selves shifting on the surface. Through a process of gradual emergence, she locates herself in images that explore interdependence within social groups. This layering process draws attention to the way in which painting is, like the self, a mutable record of a temporal process rather than a fixed image of a point in time.