Born in Geelong, Australia.
Lives and works in Canberra, Australia.

Gary Smith grew up in the industrial town of Geelong on the Bellarine Peninsular of Victoria. He developed an early fascination with the flare from the oil refinery chimney and the local industrial landscape.

His canvases are infused with a splendour, opulence, dignity, stateliness, and majestic sumptuousness beyond their original status. The work-a-day grunge of refineries, distilleries, bridges, oilrigs, silos and storage tanks is disguised and imbued with a romantic vision and disguise. These industrial entities hover on the edge of recognition. Rows of silos appear as colonnades in a vast cathedral. Storage tanks masquerade as mystic spheres of possibility; as orbs, globes and shrines or pavilions of desire.

An alchemical combination of traditional glaze painting techniques combined with contemporary image application technologies transforms the everyday constructions into enigmatic, veiled, oblique structures with hazy focal ambiguity. Each of Gary Smith’s works is created with multiple layered applications of lustrous paint glazes and pigment which impart a pearlescent sheen to the surfaces. When combined with the sense of light and distance it gives a cinematic cast to the paintings.

Gary Smith’s technique has grown from his earlier series of ‘evocations of atmosphere’, that he developed from tiny fragments from the skies of nineteenth century romantic landscapes and his explorations of Western landscape painting and its relationship to Japanese scroll painting. Despite its underlying industrial imagery, his subsequent bodies of work are still aligned with this reductive approach to landscape and retain the stillness and Oriental ‘sensibility’ and silkiness of surface that is distinctive of his oeuvre.

Having completed a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Fine Arts from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Gary Smith went on to complete a Masters of Philosophy in Visual Arts at the Australian National University.

Gary Smith has been a practicing artist since the mid 1980’s and has exhibited his work extensively in both solo and group exhibitions. He has been a finalist in a number of significant art prizes including the Archibald Prize (2012), the Geelong Contemporary Art Prize (2012), the John Fries Memorial Prize (2010), the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize (2009), and the Albany Art Prize (2009).

His work can be found in both public and private collections around Australia including the Victorian Education Department collection and the Artbank collection.

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Gary Smith_Alchemy series_2017. Installation shot by Zan Wimberley. Gary Smith_Alchemy series_2017. Installation shot by Zan Wimberley. Gary Smith, Alchemy 19, 2017, oil and resin on canvas, 60 x 45 cm. Gary Smith, Alchemy 17, 2017, oil and resin on mirror, 100x100 cm. Gary Smith, Alchemy 1, 2017, oil and resin on mirror, 100x100 cm Gary Smith, Alchemy 15, 2017, oil and resin on mirror, 100x100 cm Gary Smith, Alchemy 14, 2017, oil and resin on mirror, 100x100 cm Gary Smith, Alchemy 11, 2017, oil and resin on canvas, 42.5x62.5 cm Gary Smith, Alchemy 8, 2017, oil and resin on canvas, 40x40 cm Gary Smith, Alchemy 7, 2017, oil and resin on mirror, 100x100 cm Gary Smith, Alchemy 3, 2017, oil and resin on canvas, 61x61 cm Gary Smith, Alchemy 6, 2017, oil and resin on mirror, 100x100 cm Gary Smith, Alchemy 5, 2017, oil and resin on mirror, 100x100 cm Purple Haze_2014_acrylic and pigment on canvas_120 x 90cm Buddha_2015_acrylic and pigment on canvas_120 x 90cm Emerald_2014_acrylic and pigment on canvas_120 x 90cm Immanence_2014_acrylic and pigment on canvas_120 x 90cm Red Hot_2014_acrylic and pigment on canvas_50 x 50cm Waymark_2015_acrylic and pigment on canvas_120 x 90cm Blood Tower_2014_acrylic and pigment on canvas_90 x 120cm Gary Smith_Pipes III_2010_acrylic and pigment on canvas_120 x 102.5cm. Gary Smith_Channel Marker 2_2012_acrylic and pigment on canvas_120 x 90cm. Gary Smith_Crystal Palace_2012_acrylic and pigment on canvas_115 x 240cm. Gary Smith_Channel Marker 1_2012_acrylic and pigment on canvas_120 x 90cm. Gary Smith_Channel Marker 3_2012_acrylic and pigment on canvas_120 x 90cm. Gary Smith_Swell_2012_acrylic and pigment on canvas_120 x 100cm. Gary Smith_Pipes IV_2010_acrylic and pigment on canvas_102.5 x 120cm. Gary Smith_Pipes V_2009_acrylic and pigment on canvas_61 x 61cm. Gary Smith_Shimmer 2_2009_acrylic and pigment on canvas_46 x 46cm. Gary Smith_ Refinery 2_2010_acrylic and pigment on canvas_115 x 240cm.