Gary Ray Smith was born in Essex where he studied Fashion and Textiles in Southend-on-Sea, before gaining a Degree in Painting at Chelsea College of Art. He moved to Cornwall in 2002.
Gary enjoyed a career in personnel management and has spent the last twenty years in the graphics/signage industries. At the same time he has continued to explore painting and knitted textiles. He has recently adjusted his work life balance and now splits his time between his day job and developing his creative outputs.
Much of Gary’s work deals with grief and loss but the output, whether painted or knitted, is usually positive, joyous and celebratory. Angels appear a lot in his work – they can be about dealing with loss or the creation of a fantasy environment for his angel grandson Florian to inhabit. His current work is an eclectic mix of painting, knitted textiles, children’s book illustration, hand painted signs and illustrations for businesses and products. He finds that these projects inform each other and having worked as a graphic designer, his paintings are influenced by hand lettering, typography, fairground and tattoo art. He also has a love of “kidlit” art and pop art.
