Brad Smith to Paint at Galleria Dante
 Joe and Claire Guarniere - PVNN
| | Throught the 29th, "the most romantic painter in Santa Fe," Brad Smith, will be painting at Galleria Dante in Puerto Vallarta. For more information, visit GalleriaDante.com. | | |
Brad Smith, dubbed as "the most romantic painter in Santa Fe," now divides his time between Puerto Vallarta and Santa Fe, New Mexico. He will be painting at Galleria Dante through February 29th, and can create a personal painting just for you.
Both men and women collect Smith's paintings, and both seem equally beguiled by the magic. Women identify with the emotions and dreams they sense behind the expressions of these elegant yet somehow familiar ladies. Men feel a tug of desire that is less for the subject of the painting than for the possibilities of life and love they see in her face. Everyone seems to realize that there is vastly more here than meets the eye.
Until mid-March you will find Brad painting most days on site at the gallery. Models of all ages are welcome to sit for Brad. Anyone who has done so already have thoroughly enjoyed the time. Bring coffee or book in hand and either enjoy watching Brad paint or if you feel up to the challenge a brief sitting is encouraged. From February 18th-22nd, Brad will be painting from 10 am to 2 pm daily. From February 25th-29th, he will be painting from 2 pm to 4 pm.
Brad Smith's arrival in Santa Fe at the start of the present century was auspicious for every area of his life. Working as a professional musician at the time, he was bunking between gigs at the Colorado ranch of singer/composer Gary Morris.
While playing the Opera House concert arranged by Elizabeth and Randy Travis to benefit victims of the devastating Los Alamos fire, Brad met William Vincent, a prominent and widely appreciated painter and gallery owner.
Brad later showed Vincent some of his work and was invited on the spot to show at the William Vincent Gallery. Vincent saw the very qualities of confidence, maturity, and aesthetic integrity in all Smith's paintings that make great artistic music in Smith's paintings today.
From his earliest memories of childhood forward, Smith has needed no persuasion to acquaint himself intimately with piano, percussion, and art. Smith's lifelong compulsion to make music, to draw, to paint, and to relish every kind of learning, bears exquisite fruit in the paintings he creates today.
That readiness to burst into an artist's wonderland of color found fulfillment only after Smith moved to Santa Fe in 2000. His creative spirit and his palette opened up completely to the enticements of pure and luscious chroma. Color has been a signature element in Smith's paintings ever since, vivid, alive, skillfully orchestrated to work harmoniously in splendid variety.
Smith arranges shapes, forms, colors, and textures, with a surety of eye and hand that suggest extensive education and experience in both studio art and art history, but his formal education stopped after high school.
Smith's compositions have music in them, balanced, nuanced, rhythmic and flowing here, staccato and syncopated there. Smith paints what is visible and suggests with finesse, delicacy, and sensitivity what is not.
Motivated by the urge to cultivate, to make things grow, Smith includes plants and flowers in settings and as subjects. Other themes that come up in Smith's work are the rodeo, ethnography, and the landscape. He has developed an equally wide range of artistic approaches, each tailored uniquely to the needs of the particular subject.
Smith paints in three mediums, acrylic, oil, and watercolor, the last of which has its own expressive power and has added personal meaning for the artist. "I can't describe exactly why, but I like to use all three mediums for different reasons. Muted colors seem richer in oil; for a brighter palette, I like acrylic. I have always loved watercolor, the medium my grandfather taught me, for its unique set of properties and possibilities." says Smith.
More than half Smith's paintings are of women - elegant, at ease, naturally graceful, naturally beautiful in their exquisite variety and in the exquisite settings Smith conjures for them. Patterns and colors relate to each other in opposition and harmony in all of Smith's paintings, just as they do in the lives of the subjects Smith explores.
Smith's paintings encompass contemporary romanticism and abstract expressionism side by side, differentiated by degree of abstraction, united by compositional and technical brilliance. It's easy to see why Smith's paintings resonate with an ever-widening field of collectors.
For more information about this talented artist, visit GalleriaDante.com. If you have any questions, want to make a purchase, or are ready to get Brad Smith started on that commission you've been dreaming about, send an email to info(at)galleriadante.com or call us at (322) 222-2477.
You'll enjoy the comfortable ambience created by a professional but easygoing and down-to-earth master painter, Brad Smith, and his lovely partner Sachi Oba. And be forewarned, the paintings are even harder to resist in person. Galleria Dante is located at Basilio Badillo #269 on the South Side of Puerto Vallarta.
Also painting at the gallery this month: Cherie Sibley – February 18, 20 and 22. And Jean-Gabriel Lambert - February 25 to February 29 and March 3 to March 7. |
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Vallarta Living | Art Talk | February 2008 
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