Mike Smith (Born in 1932) began sculpture and drawing in 1944 at the age of 12. He attended several student shows until age 10 when he discovered baseball. Smith never drew anything again until 1957. He began painting seriously that year and worked for the next 5 years in abstract forms. It started to become a real dead end for him. He has since tried to maintain an autobiographical approach and has tried to abandon any 'school' of painting. His subjects are mostly found around the county he lives in or in his backyard. Over the years, Smith has had more than 50 solo shows. One of the most interesting was a double-show in a gallery at the American Consulate in Leipzig, Germany. The media he uses include bronze, watercolor, wood, ceramic, oil, and several printmaking techniques. Smith says that people always want to know the meaning of his work and where he gets his ideas. He likes to think that his work is simply about the places and people he loves, about creating a world around them that he realized can never exist.
Images, unlike the written word, do not dictate to him. It is impossible to discuss what he’s up to. He says that humans are visual beings and each image is like a dialogue. That’s what he sees and, he guesses, after 25 years of painting almost every day, it has become his world. Born in Portland, Oregon, he spent his childhood growing up in Vancouver, and the Puget Sound area. Currently, he resides in Camas Washington, a small paper and pulp community located on the shores of the Columbia River. He is a graduate of the University of Portland from where he received a degree in English Literature. He supported himself doing commercial art endeavors such as graphic design while pursuing his fine art career.
