When Chesley Smith is working in his home art studio, there’s going to be music playing. Mostly it’s instrumental jazz — David Sanborn, for instance, or Boney James. Sometimes he listens to rhythm and blues.
And he’s letting the music dictate what he’s putting on the canvas. Smith creates what he calls “visual symphonies,” and lets the abstract images depict what the music is saying.
“It’s what I’m feeling at the time,” he said. “While I’m listening to the music, I try to create that same feeling and emotions with that art. The paper that I choose, the colors that I choose, all of that relates to that mood and feeling that I’m having while listening to that music.”
To make those mixed media pieces, Smith uses acrylic paint and other materials, sometimes various shapes of paper. He’ll drip and splatter the paint, much in the style of Jackson Pollock.
Smith taught art in Waco for more than 40 years. He taught at Paul Quinn College for 21 years, including for a year after it moved to Dallas from its longtime home on Elm Avenue. He then taught at the G.L. Wiley, Tennyson and Brazos Middle School campuses in the Waco Independent School District.
His interest in art began at a very young age. His father would bring home sketch pads from the paper plant where he worked, and Smith would put those to good use. He remembers sitting at the kitchen table with his father and them drawing a horse together.
“My dad was encouraging,” Smith said. “He was very, very supportive.”
Smith was known as the class artist at A.J. Moore High School in Waco. He helped out on assignments for friends in biology classes, drawing muscles and bone structures. Smith also drew the lion — the school mascot — for the yearbook. When one of his pieces won a poster contest, “that’s when I really knew that’s what I wanted to do as a career,” he said.
Smith continued to make art during his teaching career. Starting when he was at Paul Quinn, he was commissioned to do many portraits and painted a few murals as well. He got into creating abstracts and collages after retiring from education.
“I sell a lot of collages,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I just sold a couple of pieces at a show in Fort Worth in February.”
A day doesn’t pass without Smith creating something.
“I just love drawing and painting,” he said. “A lot of people say, ‘Well, you go to all these shows. You just want to make money.’ It’s not about money. I do want people to appreciate what I do and want to make a few sales, but I’m gonna paint, even if I didn’t have an art show. I paint and draw every single day. It’s just like breathing, eating. I can’t do without it.”
Smith is now at work on some pieces that focus on hair and the growth of hair and the movement of hair. They’ll be part of an upcoming show at Art Center Waco, an exhibit that will revolve around the theme of growth.
A Master of Arts
Chesley Smith was born and raised in Waco. He graduated from A.J. Moore High School, attended Bishop College and graduated from Jarvis Christian College. While teaching art at Paul Quinn College in Waco, Smith earned his master’s degree from East Texas State University, which is now Texas A&M-Commerce. He also did post-graduate studies at Banaras Hindu University in India.
Smith’s artwork can be seen on his Instagram and Facebook pages as well as at chesleysmithstudio.com.
