About the Artist

Spokane Artist Aaron Smith

Inspired Urban Landscapes

Hi, my name is Aaron Smith. After a serious back injury in my twenties, I began searching for relief anywhere I could find it and eventually found myself practicing Tai Chi. What began as physical healing turned into a decade-long dedication to a martial art I knew nothing about at the time.

Over time I realized the focus and repetition I had practiced through Tai Chi could also be applied to something else. I chose painting. I became fascinated with the idea that years of effort could slowly accumulate into something visible. Instinctively, everybody understands this, but I wanted to approach it almost like a kind of pseudo-science. I wasn’t an artist when I began, but I committed myself to painting daily, carrying the same focus and repetition I had practiced for years into art.

Today I paint imagined worlds and monumental landscapes in an attempt to create emotional experiences that cannot easily be explained through words alone. Though a painting can never fully communicate personal inner experience, I hope to evoke equivalent feelings of longing, wonder, reverence, mystery, and beauty in those who view the work.

My work has been featured at Tsuga Gallery, Barrister Winery, Terrain, the Blue Door Theater, LA Resistance Gallery, Avenue West Gallery, Wiley’s Bistro, MAD Studios, Craftsman Cellars, Arbor Crest Winery, Terra Blanca Winery, The Inlander, The Spokesman-Review, the Jundt Museum at Gonzaga University, Liberty Gallery, New Moon Gallery, Chrysalis Gallery, CLTRE Gallery, and Art Chowder Magazine.