Hello, hello.
I’m Jeffrey Smith.
Thanks for clicking through to find out more. I’m really glad you’re here.
I’m a painter based in Minneapolis. Mostly landscapes, and pet portraits on commission. Whatever’s on the easel, I’m playing with light and color.
Self-portrait, 2020
Oil on prepared paper
Trays of soft pastels
In the studio
A can full of color
When I was a kid, I’d spend hours in the kitchen making picture after picture. My mother used to introduce me by saying, “Jeffrey draws morning, noon, and night.” We had a giant Folgers coffee can full of crayons in every color, all jumbled together. I’d dig through it for exactly the right shade, then draw on cheap typing paper or whatever was handy.
That pull never left. I still have a love for art supplies, some might say an obsession. I delight in laying out a palette, seeing how many mixes come out of a few colors, sorting a tray of pastels by color and value. It’s been there since the coffee can, and I expect it’ll be there for good.
I think we all have our own version of this. Maybe it’s a fountain pen that’s a little much for Post-its. A stack of journals you can’t stop buying. A closet that only feels right when it’s grouped by color and sorted by value. Mine just happens to end up as paintings.
Learning to see
I spent four years training at The Atelier Studio Program of Fine Art in Minneapolis, and another eight years teaching there. More than anything, it taught me to see. I learned to notice how light falls and how color shifts, and how a small change in value can change a whole painting.
Seeing well is mostly a matter of simplifying. A landscape has a million leaves and a dog has a million hairs, and a painting doesn’t need every one of them. It needs the few big shapes of light and shadow that make a hill read as a hill and a dog read as a dog. When those are right, the painting holds together from across the room, and your eye fills in the rest as you come closer.
Autumn
Oil on panel
Walk in the Garden
Gouache on paper
Knowing when to stop
For a long time, I wanted every painting to be correct. In art school, accuracy felt like the highest thing a painting could aim for, and for years the only paintings that felt right to me were the ones that matched what was in front of me.
These days I’m after something else. I want a painting to feel joyful, with the kind of energy I’d want on the wall by my dining table every time I sit down to eat. So I try to stop when it has said enough of what I wanted to say, and let the rest stay loose.
Mostly that happens in landscapes, painted in Minneapolis and at a cottage overlooking the South Shore of Lake Superior, in oil, gouache, and whatever medium pulls me in next.
Living with color
People fall for a painting for all kinds of reasons, like a color they love, a place they’ve been, or a place they’ve always wanted to go. Sometimes it turns out to be the piece a room was waiting for.
A quiet, simple room starts to feel more alive with a landscape full of movement on the wall. A botanical can bring a little whimsy to a clean, modern space. And real paint has a life of its own, with light catching the edge of each brushstroke as you walk past.
Stock and Lisianthus
Gouache on illustration board
The rest is in the paintings
Somewhere in the paintings, I hope you’ll find one that makes you say, “Wow, I love that.”
