Landscapes
She painted outdoor scenes, somewhat less successfully than her indoor scenes, but painted outside whenever someone could take her out in the countryside to paint, going on many trips. In her life she visited several towns outside Sydney, as well as visiting the national capital, Canberra. She also painted in the Blue Mountains, and in Moss Vale and Exeter. Beginning in the late 1930s, she started a style which was less influenced by the modernist one, and more to do with the light and colour of Australia, and her own personal interpretation of the landscape. Her paintings show the olive green and sienna colours of the Australian bush, depicted in a style where the brush strokes are visible, made up of many similar colours. One of her best landscapes was a series of four large paintings she did called Four panels for a screen: loquat tree, gum and wattle trees, waterfall, picnic in the gully#, 1929. The first two panels show the trees in her yard, while the last two show the world further away from her home; a waterfall and people having a picnic with a billy can in a gully. It symbolises the theme and division in her landscape work between her immediate streets and trees, and further away from her home, where her friends and relatives often took her to paint. The four paintings were done on commission, however the commission was refused, and because of this Smith would never work on a large commission again.
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