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Hello, I am Les E. Smutz, a self-taught professional artist, muralist, and an architectural embellishment artisan and owner of an interior design business. Having explored several avenues of art, I am also a woodcrafter, writer, musician and songwriter and maybe more...I'm still exploring.
My oil paintings and drawings are mostly about beauty and romance and usually include one or more of the following: clouds, water, female figure(s). I'm not about making statements, just about appreciation of the beauty of the world around us and the images to which my eye is drawn or my imagination wanders.
Although I am primarily self-taught and have drawn and painted most of my life to one degree or another, my mentoring with regard to serious pursuit of art as a career began with a couple of talented high school friends and was further nurtured by studying the works of the great Victorian romanticists: WJ Waterhouse, WA Bouguereau, Sir Francis Dicksee, Godward and many others. In 1998 I decided to learn portraiture and practiced drawing faces from magazines, friends and family until I could produce a pretty fair likeness. When people began asking me to draw their family members I decided it was time to go to the next level. I opened a studio in Exeter, CA in 2003, then moved it to Visalia, CA in 2004, where I was represented by Easelheads Gallery. In 2005, personal reasons prompted a move to Phoenix, AZ, where I now live and work.
I am open to commissions and gallery representation. For sales or any other inquiries, please contact me via email.
