Chris Smith

Chris Smith

My name is Chris Smith and I am an artist. I live in Huntington Beach and have a 22-minute commute to my studio in Long Beach. I am new to SoCal and have been here for a hot minute. I am originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and recently spent some time in the south. I attended CSU Chico and received a Bachelor of Arts in art studio. I currently paint in a heavily textured abstract/expressive style that is physical, chaotic, and very messy.Coincidentally on purpose, since I live in a major surf town, the medium I work with is the same materials used in the surfing world, resin and Sex Wax. Combining these two mediums, with the help of a cheese grater, allows me to build texture, creating physical depth and when I apply pigment/paint this adds to the depth but more in an illusory manner. The process I created permits no allowance to complete a specific vision from start to finish and that’s OK. So far, I completed several pieces in SoCal and it appears that what I see coming out of my work, in an abstraction, is the terrain and surrounding water between Huntington Beach and Long Beach. Whether it’s the platforms in the Pacific, the boulders controlling the flow of water, those things that pump oil, or the surf it’s all finding its way from the subconscious into my paintings