Adrien Smart | Staircase Wit

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Melissa Lochhead

Adrien Smart, “Summers Used To Be Relaxing (detail),” 2023

oil on canvas, 40" x 30" (courtesy of the gallery)

Opening Reception: November 18th, 12-3PM.

Adrien Smart is a Canadian oil painter whose portraits are inspired by neoclassicism and a modern desire to cast figures in a refreshing representational aesthetic. He delves into melodrama as a source of inspiration rather than something to be avoided like the plague, and he believes that every person deserves to be the subject of a painting. Smart mines for that sweet-spot where a figure in oils can depict our deepest emotions with a sincerity that speaks volumes to the human condition, and if a little emotion comes to the surface from the viewer, well, that’s what he’d like to call a “two-fer-one.”

He is a storyteller, and always has been. Whether it was drawing comics as a child, crafting short fiction on his grandmother’s typewriter as a teenager, or making independent films as a young adult, all roads seemingly led him to pursue a BFA in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria. He has worn many hats, and those who have met him will know this to be true. He is the class clown, the commercial flower farmer, the writer of spam-emails, the dedicated support worker, the ice-cream man, the friend, the son, the brother, and the kind of artist who needs Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Moirisette to be within arm's reach at all times.

Angst can fuel the world, but it's a fuel best refined by those with a sense of humor and the wherewithal to wield it kindly; for the purpose of bold and beautiful works of art.