The work was made with a commitment to trusting one’s instincts and waiting for understanding. It is about becoming sensitive to the quiet within. I invite the viewer to perceive a living truth in the stillness of awareness, to become more aware of one’s own emotional color.

(Nathaniel Kyung Smith)

Nathaniel Kyung Smith (b. 1990) grew up in a rural part of Minnesota. He spent his summers exploring the many bodies of water and forests in the area, as well as performing chores around his parent’s flower shop. The vistas of Lake Superior were especially striking to him— where volcanic bluffs, expanses of still, clear water and billowing clouds converged to create landscapes of interlocking color and shape.

Smith embodies his practice as a process of personal discovery, his works exploring the human body’s psychological and spiritual relationship to both natural and built environments. His work is historically grounded in its use of traditional materials including carved stone, ceramics and oil paint. His work is informed and expanded by the performative and embodied artforms of dance and theater. Smith’s figurative work references modernist sculpture and painting: cubism, surrealism, neoclassicism and naturalism.

He was educated in fine art and Socratic Seminar at Biola University in Los Angeles, receiving his BFA in Studio Arts in 2014. He has exhibited in group exhibitions at La Beast, Green Gallery, Prism Gallery, Pasadena City College, and has publicly visible artworks around Los Angeles.