Colin Hugh Smith
Artist Bio
Since leaving England at 16, Colin Hugh Smith lived in the United States, the Bahamas and Jamaica, but for the last 50 years he has called New Brunswick home. On his journey he's been a Registered Interior Designer, a restaurateur, a journalist, a published fiction writer and an art promoter, but these days his creative energies are mostly focused on making visual, decorative art.
Colin studied art at UNB in Fredericton, and the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. He also gained much from workshops with New Brunswick artists such as Molly Lamb Bobak, Gisela Lindlau, Jennifer Pazienza, Brigid Toole Grant and Richard Flynn, but he is largely a self-trained artist.
He has written many articles on the visual arts (he was nominated for the Christina Sabat Award in 2001), drama and classical music – including book reviews – for Saint John's late daily paper The Times Globe and New Brunswick's provincial paper, The Telegraph Journal, and its weekend supplement, The Reader, as well as other national publications such as Opera News and the Parliamentary Review.
In addition to a long-standing association, including solo shows, at Gallery 78 in Fredericton, his work has been displayed at the former Seacoast Gallery as well as at Sunbury Shores in St. Andrews, and the old ABEC in Saint John (the Saint John Arts Centre). His work was also featured at Saint John's Imperial Theatre, the New Brunswick Museum (Art and Artifacts, www.nbm-mnb.ca/ ), the New Brunswick Festival of the Arts, the University of New Brunswick's Student Voices show, and ARTgallery ‘Rat in Queenstown. He has appeared in both solo and group exhibitions at Cobalt Gallery, the Klausen Gallery, the Fundy Art Gallery, all of Saint John, and has shipped several paintings West to the Kensington Gallery in Calgary and British Columbia and East to Scotland and England. He’s recently appeared in festivals such as the annual Rothesay Netherwood Art Show and last summer’s successful Summerville Art Festival.
Artist Statement
My current work has mostly two directions – the exuberant and colourful florals which I love to paint and have been my most popular work and the more profound and soulful abstract pieces in which I play with colour and rhythm and try to express my personal philosophies and states of mind.
In my recent uptown Saint John studio of 20 years standing, both kinds of paintings were hanging or leaning amidst other goings-on, some successful, some not, projects which involved – among other things – a loom and several soft-sculpture wall hangings. I'm always working on something, or at least planning it.
Beaumonde
Acrylic on Canvas
24" x 36"
$650
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Marianna
Acrylic on Canvas
24" x 36"
$500
SOLD
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In Ellen's Kitchen
Acrylic on Canvas
24" x 36"
$850
SOLD
Kobe
Acrylic on Canvas
24" x 20"
$400
SOLD
Bianca's Bouquet
Acrylic on Canvas
24" x 24"
$650
Early Sensation
Acrylic on Canvas
24" x 24"
$450
SOLD