A Life
in
Art

By the age of six, I knew I wanted to be an artist, like my father and his friends. In one of the rooms of our NYC apartment, my father had an easel, paints, and a drawing table where he did his work. I had an area on the floor next to his where I did my work.

In addition to being a fine artist, my father, Sidney Smith, was an art director in a large NY advertising agency, and an excellent calligrapher. It was not unusual to see him at his drawing board in the hours before dawn, and on one particular dark winter morning I had a moment of sudden intuitive understanding that would forever set the course of my life.

Having made my way through the smoky darkness of our apartment (both of my parents were heavy smokers, and there was a perpetual cloud of dense smoke lingering throughout) I crept into my father's studio, drawn to the humming fluorescence filling the air above his head. The dramatic contrast of this man and his work, lit up against the thick darkness of the room was nothing short of magical, made all the more entrancing by the flavor and finesse with which my father could make marvelous somethings appear on the gleaming white paper, where there was previously nothing. Witnessing the alchemical process of his imagination (the invisible element) being transformed into narrative images (the visible element) was amazing and delightful, and made an indelible impression on me.

During those early years my father nurtured my creative spirit. He taught me to draw, paint and to write beautifully. We would make frequent trips to the great museums and galleries of New York, and take in the masterpieces of eastern and western art. The work of modern artists like Rothko, de Kooning, Pollock and Motherwell were all known to me at an early age. Picasso and Miro fascinated me, and I had an uncanny ability to differentiate the work of the Flemish masters from one another.

At the age of thirteen I was enrolled at the Art Students League of N.Y. where I studied figure drawing and watercolor painting. By the age of sixteen I was admitted to Pratt Institute where in the course of four years I had three significant teachers. The first two were German-expressionist Jochen Seidel, whose roots went straight back to the Bauhaus, and Ed Dugmore, who was a well known American abstract expressionist closely aligned with Clyfford Still. Most of all, it was Robert Natkin, the spiritual descendent of Paul Klee and Pierre Bonnard, who has had a most profound effect upon me. Natkin instilled a deep appreciation for the traditions and history of art and its painters as well as providing an introduction to the sensuality and complexity of color and composition. Most importantly, he illuminated the path of the artist's way, one that is infused with passion and mystery. Natkin remains a powerful influence to this day. After receiving a B.F.A. from Pratt, I studied with Phillip Pearlstein at Brooklyn College.

Beginning in 1967, I began showing my work in NYC, in two-man shows with Sid, and in group shows. By the early seventies I was exhibiting in Toronto, at the O'Keefe Center, and the Pollack Gallery. I left NYC in the mid seventies to study the healing arts, and enrolled at the New England School of Acupuncture in 1975. By 1976 I was back in NYC, employed as a part-time baker, doing massages, and establishing a working relationship with members of the contact improvisation dance community. I spent nearly two years going to dance jams and performances, drawing the dancers in action. Somewhere during that time I was offered a one-man show of the dance-related work at the WestBroadway Gallery in SOHO. At the end of 1979 I decided to move to northern California, to live in an intentional community where I would do some intensive personal, inner work. In 1981, my son Sasha was born.

The last twenty years have been spent in rural Sonoma County, painting, drawing, printmaking, collaborating with many musicians and poets (Richard Denner, Jonah Raskin, Sasha Smith, the Frame [Dave MacNab, Eric Crystal, Hillel Familant, Elliot Kavee] and the Adam Theis Ensemble), participating in one man and group exhibitions, and raising a son.

The paintings mirror my inner life, serving as an ongoing journal without words. For me, painting is a means to access feelings, sensations, and information buried in the unconscious. It is also a way to reflect the beauty, depth and richness inherent in nature.

I spend a lot of time outdoors painting, walking, being still, observing. Any lichen-covered rock or square inch of bark is a perfect universe unto itself, and blessed with perfect natural harmony, great complexity, and divine simplicity. This organic, unselfconscious harmony is created from chaos and seemingly random occurrences, fully charged with a sense of mystery rooted in the unknown. All this inspires me, and continually renews my reverence for life. In appreciating the beauty, fragility, wildness, mystery and transient quality in all creation, it brings me to living/painting in the same spirit and asks that I move through this life with greater stillness, awareness, and compassion.

First Series
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