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Biography
Born and raised in San Francisco, Doug Smith was fortunate to have talented, creative parents who recognized his own talent from an early age and encouraged him to pursue his art. His mother, herself an accomplished impressionist painter, exposed him to the wealth of San Francisco's art exhibitions as a youngster, introducing him to the masters in their regular visits to the city's outstanding museums. By age nine he had sold his first oil painting.
Smith received his first formal artistic instruction at San Francisco City College as a fine art major. He then furthered his education at San Francisco Academy of Art University. At 19 he participated in his first group exhibition in the city's Artist Cooperative Gallery.
After service in the U.S. Army, Smith returned to San Francisco and joined a firm as a graphic designer. The company relocated to Southern California and he continued his training at the Art Center College of Design and the California Art Institute.
Throughout his long and successful career in graphic design and art direction, Smith continued to paint and allowed his artistic "voice" to evolve. In 2000, he made the transition to focusing full-time on his passion for painting.
His signature body of work has garnered enthusiasm and interest from private collectors worldwide as well as museums including the Rockwell Museum of Western Art and the Booth Museum of Western Art for their permanent collections.
Doug's strong composition, bold technique,textures and vibrant colors evoke the traditions of Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud of the early Bay Area Figurative School.
Doug Smith combines the exuberance of abstract expressionism and the arresting intimacy of the realistically familiar. Traditional farmhouses and weathered barns punctuate his vast planes of color, line and texture. The compositions evoke enduring themes of the American West:
Boundless optimism and wistful nostalgia; nature's randomness and man's ordered domesticity. They suggest both the endless agrarian mosaics and the archetypical homesteads that appear mostly in memory.
Artist Statement
Doug Smith
I have always been fascinated with the patterns in nature. As a youngster, I often traveled through western America in the family car. My gaze would be fixed at the window, taking in the rural landscapes – delighted by the striking differences of scene with each passing second, and yet mesmerized by the soothing sameness, sometimes for hours at a time. The countless impressions became vivid and lasting memories.
As I became an adult and traveled by plane (always in a window seat), I still studied the textures and patterns of the earth. Now I could see in a glance the very landscapes the ten-year-old boy used to contemplate from the car. For centuries, over hundreds of thousands of square miles, farmers have created these wonderful land mosaics. There are fields, orchards, pastures and ranches – punctuated by homes and outbuildings, and accented by roads and nature’s erosion, gullies, rock formations, waterways and coastlines – all strikingly different from one another and together composing a harmonious whole.
It is natural to connect the dots between the childhood memories and the aerial views. Together they have inspired this current body of work. My images reflect America’s fertile farmlands: especially California’s vast San Joaquin Valley.
Along with this inspiration from the land, I find that my long experience as a graphic designer invests my work with strong organization, color, balance and texture. Painting with acrylic on canvas, I interject an expressionistic montage with a small dash of realism. I try to convey in my art a sense of vast distance and space as well as of place; to evoke a mood of timelessness, and a feeling of nostalgia.
Some of my paintings depict specific locales, but most are composites of American agrarian images held dearly and indelibly in my memory.
When I created this current body of work, I found this interesting anonymous quote: "Man, despite his sophistication and his many accomplishments, owes his existence to a six inch layer of top soil and the fact that it rains."
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Exhibitions:
2012 Two Person Exhibition, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St Helena, CA
2012 Group Exhibition, United States Embassy, Spaso House,
Moscow, Russia
2012 Two Person Exhibition, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St Helena, CA
2012 Invitational Exhibition, "Artists for a New Century" Bennington Center,
Bennington, VT
2012 Solo Exhibition, Watts Fine Art, Zionsville, IN
2012 Winter Group Show, Visions West Galleries, Denver, CO
2011 Collectors Legacy Exhibition, Rockwell Museum of Western Art
2011 Art of the New West Exhibition, Watts Fine Art, Zionsville, IN
2011 Group Landscape Show, Watts Fine Art, Zionsville, IN
2011 Solo Exhibition, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, St Helena, CA
2011 Solo Exhibition, Alpha Omega Winery, Rutherford, CA
2010 Two person Exhibition, Left Coast Galleries, Studio City, CA
2010 Art of the New West Exhibition, Watts Fine Art, Zionsville, IN
2010 Two Person Exhibition, Campton Gallery, New York
2010 21st Century Regionalist: Invitational Art of the Next West,
Rockwell Museum of Western Art, Corning, NY
2009 Solo Exhibition, Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco
2009 Two Person Exhibition, Blue Gallery, Kansas City, MO
2008 LACMA Wet Paint Exhibition, Beverly Hills, CA
2008 Group Exhibition, Melissa Morgan Fine Art Gallery, Palm Desert, CA
2008 Group Exhibition, Left Coast Galleries, Studio City, CA
2007 21st Century Regionalists, Invitational Art of the New West,
Booth Western Art Museum, Atlanta
2007 Group Exhibition, Modern Masters Fine Art Gallery, Palm Desert, CA
2006 LACMA Wet Paint Exhibition, Beverly Hills, CA
2006 Boston International Fine Art Show, Wynne Falconer Gallery, Boston
2006 LACMA Four Person Exhibition, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
2005 Group Exhibition, Patricia Rovzar Gallery, Kirkland, WA
2005 Solo Exhibition, McLean Gallery, Malibu, CA
Museum Collections:
Booth Western Art Museum, Cartersville, GA
Rockwell Museum of Western Art, Corning, NY
Publications:
2012 Western Art and Architecture Magazine, August Issue
2012 American Art Collector, March Issue, Watts Fine Art Exhibition
2011 Western Art Collector, October, Collectors Legacy Exhibition,
Rockwell Museum of Western Art
2011 Western Art Collector, September, Art of the New West, Watts Fine Art
2011 Marin Magazine Cover, February Issue
2010 Western Art Collector, September, Art of the New West, Watts Fine Art
2010 American Art Collector, July, Rockwell Museum of Western Art Exhibition
2010 American Art Collector, June, Rockwell Museum of Western Art Exhibition
2009 American Art Collector, July, Artist Focus
2008 Southwest Art, January, Best of the West - Art of the New West
Booth Western Art Museum
2008 Western Art Collector, January - Booth Western Art Museum Exhibition
2005 Southwest Art, February, Best of the West |
