Carson Smith
A “Professional” Artist
My artwork is an invitation to experience the world through my eyes—a landscape profoundly shaped by schizoaffective disorder (bipolar type) and severe ADHD. For me, chronic distraction and cognitive overwhelm are not merely symptoms; they are my primary visual languages.
While my mental health made traditional, structured art education nearly impossible to navigate, it forced me to forge my own path. As a primarily self-taught artist guided by the invaluable wisdom of two private mentors, I developed a highly personal, intuitive technique born out of necessity and survival.
Originally working out of Salt Lake City, I recently relocated to Austin, Texas. I chose to uproot my life and practice to surround myself with a more like-minded, collaborative, and friendly artist scene. Austin’s raw creative energy has become the perfect ecosystem for my work to evolve.
While traditional portraiture utilizes meticulous detail to anchor the viewer’s eye, I intentionally reverse this philosophy. In both my monochromatic figures and my highly textured, vibrant color fields, I purposefully submerge the human form inside fields of visual ‘static’ and deliberate chaos. I want you to lose your focus. I want you to feel the beautiful, turbulent noise that I navigate daily. This work is not meant for a fleeting glance; it is a conceptual space designed to be navigated, lived in, and felt by the serious collector.
