About

I trained as a sculptor and printmaker in the days when art schools still taught things like drawing and colour theory. I was extremely fortunate to have spent 2 years at Colchester School of Art where artists such as Tim Holding, John Carter, Philip ArdiDavid Smithzzone, Richard Bawden, Michael Buhler, Hugh Cronyn, Richard Pinkney and others influenced the direction of my life as well as my art. Three years at Kingston – where David Nash was a visiting lecturer – then gave me time to follow my own inspirations in sculpture and printmaking.

After those heady days the needs of family life led me away from fine art practice. Although in my career I have used my artistic skills in design, graphics, websites and advertising, my own art got rather neglected. In recent years I have been able to reconnect to the artistic drive in me again and give the time to developing new directions in my work and I am now able to concentrate on it full time.

At present I am mostly making mixed media works on paper, abstract drawings and collages. I  completed this project in March 2014. The aim was to create a collage every day for a year. Eight other artists around the world were doing similar at the same time and we used the hashtag #Collage365 to identify the project on Twitter. My #Collage365 pieces are documented on this blog and some of them were recently on display at my exhibition The Seen and The Unseen in the White Rooms at 42 Royal Road, Ramsgate (23-25 August 2014). I will be showing a large selection of them in #Collage365 – a year of Scissors & Glue my exhibition at Bridport Arts Centre from 11th November to 23rd December 2014.

I am currently collaborating with Bridport Arts Centre on another “each day” project called #Letter365, an unfolding artwork created a piece each day for a year. Each day I create a unique artwork and seal it in an envelope which gets posted or in other ways delivered to the Arts Centre where they are stored ready for an installation of the work in the Allsop Gallery in March 2015.

I have a leaning towards minimalism but a delight in the messy. I am continually fascinated by the interplay between chaos and control, emotion and the intellect. The forces of Nature – her patterns and processes – eternally move and inspire me, and landscape forms, especially our British coastline, are nearly always at the heart of my work.

If you want to find out more about my other work you can find me at davidsmithartist.net or for a quick and up-to-date digest of what I am working on take a look at my media stream on Twitter @DavidSmithArt