Dale Russell Smith

I was born in  Illinois , grew up in  Denver and have lived in  Colorado most of my life.  I attended Western State College in Gunnison, CO and graduated in 1968 with a Bachelor degree in Fine Art.  I also attended the Colorado Institute of Art for a short time.

My first “real” art job was working for a small graphic design studio and later as an art director at one of  Denver ’s major advertising agencies.  From there I started working for myself as a free-lance graphic design director/illustrator.  I free-lanced for 23 years in and around the  Denver area.  When computers took over the design industry it was time for this designer to move on.  I simply could not sit in front of a computer for ten hours a day to earn a living.

Painting full time has always been my life-long dream, so it wasn’t a difficult decision to change directions.  Now I can’t imagine doing anything else.  At the present time I work exclusively from color slides that I shoot myself.  All my work is done in transparent watercolor.  My goal for each painting is to capture the light and essence of the subject.

In the past five years I have won numerous local, regional and national awards.  In 2003, I entered four juried art competitions and won four places, including a national watercolor show in  Taos ,  New Mexico .  In 2004 I entered or was accepted into 13 local, regional and national juried art exhibitions and won a number of very nice awards.

Two real highlights for this year were being selected as a “Top 200” artists by the National Arts For The Parks competition and very recently being notified that I had won the first place award in the transparent watercolor only Watercolor West 2004 National Juried Exhibition.  The Watercolor West Show opens on October 16 and runs through December 19 in  Los Angeles .