Geoffrey Todd Smith creates complex, rule-based abstractions that place him firmly within the orbit of modern American art, but with a wandering eye to the future. His vision is guided by self-imposed limitations that instill order to an otherwise meandering dream-like process. The result is a stylish eruption of concentrated color and form, enveloped in a hand-drawn web of doodled spikes and ruffles and embedded with a rhythmic plague of polka dotted interference. The playfully constructed titles for each work provide an additional climate of atmosphere and mood without completely revealing a narrative. Smith works with a range of media including gel pens, graphite, collage, enamel paint, acrylic and oil.

Says Smith, “Doodling within self-imposed limitations has long been my way to induce introspection and conjure new images. In these recent works on paper, wavy bands of color and curvaceous lines overlap repeatedly to create dense, fluttering spaces. A cursory Rorschach-like inspection provides the viewer an array of elusive possibilities: cartoon eyes throwing shade, biting mouths adorned with shark-like teeth and clownish smirks, butterfly wings, and veils of alternating microscopic and celestial forms. In the end, I play the role of a hard working spider, entombing shapes in a handmade, resonating web of spikes and squiggles.”

In a review of Geoffrey Todd Smith’s most recent show at Western Exhibitions in 2018, artist and critic Andrew Falkowski writes: “The quiet-loud intensity of Smith’s visual stimuli discourages the impulse to scan. Rather, we are invited to slow down, approach the work and investigate from an intimate range.”

Geoffrey Todd Smith’s solo shows include Luis de Jesus Los Angeles; Hyde Park Art Center and the Union League, both in Chicago; Nudashank in Baltimore and he’s been included in group shows at the DePaul Art Museum and Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, The Hughes Gallery in Australia, The Green Gallery in Milwaukee, the Illinois State Museum,  Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles, DCKT in NYC, Circuit 12 in Dallas, and Baer Ridgway in San Francisco. His work is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Hallmark Inc. in Kansas City, Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, the Jager Collection in Amsterdam, Soho House Chicago, the South Bend Art Museum in Indiana and Harper College in Illinois and has been written about in New City, The Seen, New American Paintings, Bad at Sports, art ltd, Juxtapoz, Chicago Tribune, and Chicago Magazine, who called him one of the “rising stars we should be collecting now.” Smith is represented by Western Exhibitions and he lives and works in Chicago.