Ali Smith is a painter
who lives and works in Long Beach, California. Born in 1976, Smith
was raised in Whittier by a math professor dad and homemaker mom,
and headed to upstate New York for college, where she received
a B.S. in Studio Art from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs,
New York in 1998, minoring in Art History and French. She spent
her junior year abroad in Paris, France, which had an enormous
impact on her art and life. After college, Smith moved back to
California, dragging her boyfriend, now husband, artist Noah
Thomas along. She completed her graduate degree at California
State University, Long Beach in 2003 and has actively exhibited
her large-scale paintings since graduation.
Smith has been in numerous group and solo shows both in Los Angeles
and internationally, including exhibitions in Tokyo, Amsterdam
and an upcoming show at Galerie Brunnhofer in Austria, as well
as inclusion in Pulse Miami in
2006 and Pulse New York
2007. Smith debuted at Mark
Moore Gallery last summer in the group show, "Ultrasonic
International 1," where Leah Ollman wrote in the Los Angeles
Times that Smith's paintings are "quirky and gunky."
She has also been reviewed
in the OC Weekly, NYArts and Artweek,
where David DiMichele declared that Smith's paintings are "some
of the few in recent memory to remain captiviating while avoiding
abstraction's biggest pitfall--decoration." Drawing on her
experience living in France, Smith has taught French as well as
studio art and freshman writing at the university level,
and is currently the gallery director of Greenleaf
Gallery at Whittier College. Her work has been acquired by
the Progressive Insurance Collection, the Chaney Collection in
Texas and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation.
Ali Smith will have
her first solo show at Mark
Moore Gallery in May 2007 as well as solo shows at Finesilver
Gallery in Houston, and DNA Galerie Berlin in December 2007.
Smith is represented by Mark Moore Gallery, Santa Monica, CA.