Daniel E. Smith

(M.F.A., painting, 1999)

Smith’s work is included in collections in Australia, Aruba, Antigua, Canada, China, England, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and throughout the US. His first museum show at The Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia was in 2005 and since then, several works of his have been added to their permanent collection. Smith’s work is included in dozens of corporate and hundreds of private collections throughout the world.

As an artist, Daniel Smith considers himself fortunate to have a rich and deep set of life experiences that contribute greatly to his work today. Every experience — from growing up with a very large family in Brooklyn, New York, to becoming a member of a teaching order of monks — is a framework for his art, providing Smith with vision and insight.

In addition to SCAD, Smith studied at the Central Academy of Art and Design in Beijing, China, and participated in a painting sabbatical near Siena, Italy. His work is in collections in Antigua, Aruba, Australia, Canada, China, England, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and throughout the U.S. Twelve paintings from Smith's first museum exhibition at the Telfair Museum of Art in 2005 are now included in the museum's permanent collection. In 2011, the Jepson Center for Contemporary Arts accepted two abstract landscapes from his "In Plain View" series into its permanent collection.

Smith's paintings are generated by a love of color and form, belief in the affect and effect of environment, and enthusiasm for communicating experiences. A commitment to awareness allows these created environments to inform and change his understanding. The paintings are moments of such awareness, contemplated and allowed to develop into statements of belief. Each expanse prompts the solitary nature of the effort to understand and experience. Each structure suggests the communal aspect of that struggle. Allusions to human-created, utilitarian spaces and ordered glances of a natural world are Smith's chosen vocabulary. The grammar is light and color. Painting decisions persist as thesis. Smith shares his world with the viewer, who in turn influences each work’s deeper meaning.