Surrealist and Animist influences from Ray Smith"s Latin heritage are as present as his deep study of modern art in these engaging, poetic paintings. Of the mingling of species on his canvases, he has said that his animals are "entities of the human figure beasts, but directly related to a blueprint of our own existence." Works looks back on the artist"s lineage, both national and artistic, and appropriates Picasso"s dark Catalonian menagerie, revising it to address the current Mexican political situation and to forge a direct link between the two Hispanic traditions. Smith"s work is in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and The Menil Collection. He was born near the Texas/Mexico border to a Mexican mother and an American father, and he currently splits his time between the two countries.