With a clear nod to the San Francisco Bay Area figurative movement that flourished during his mid-century youth, Doug Smith combines the exuberance of abstract expressionism and the arresting intimacy of the realistically familiar.  Traditional farmhouses and weathered barns punctuate his vast planes of color, line and texture -- all applied with a stout confidence derived from his long and accomplished career as a graphic designer.  

The compositions evoke enduring themes of the American West:  Boundless optimism and wistful nostalgia; nature's randomness and man's ordered domesticity.  They suggest both the endless agrarian mosaics one might observe from an airplane and the archetypical homesteads that appear mostly in memory.  

Born in San Francisco, Smith evokes the aesthetic of Richard Diebenkorn and Wayne Thiebaud of the Bay Area School as well as the reassuring rural imagery of American Regionalism.  

His work has been exhibited at galleries and museums throughout the United States. The Rockwell Museum of Western Art in New York and the Booth Western Art Museum in Cartersville, Georgia have each acquired one of his paintings for its permanent collection.

Doug Smith's art can be seen at www.DougSmithArtist.com