Born in Bedford, Massachusetts, Joshua Smith spent his formative years in Oakland, California.

With interior designers for parents, Smith has been surrounded by art all his life. As a youth, he repaired furniture for his father, matching colors and repairing old paintings. One painting came back from a client’s house ruined, recalls Smith. “My father asked me to create a landscape from my imagination. That's when it registered – this is what I want to do with my life.”

At 22, he entered the Laguna College of Art and Design in Laguna Beach, studying traditional art, and portraiture in particular. In his next schooling six years later studying for an MFA at the Hartford Art School, the diverse environment afforded Smith to be exposed to a wide range of art teachers, beginning him on the path of creating the style to which he adheres today. He has lived in Connecticut since 2002.

Smith sees his paintings as metaphors for the situations and challenges that humans face in life. “I see these struggles as spiritual,” he says, “and nature has a way of revealing the very same qualities.” In his series of Dreamscapes, Smith finds interest in viewers’ own interpretations of the pieces. “A body of work can often take on its own mythology, but it is reliant on the viewer to create the story.”