Colin Smith

I have always drawn. Gahan Wilson and Charles Addams were early role models. Their cartoons combine moody drawings with brief and perfect writing. Edward Gorey has been a more lasting influence, partly because of his pen work, and partly because he created his little books, which are like nothing else. For eleven years I was the cartoonist for the Salon section of the Telegraph-Journal. Cartooning is a sublimely difficult thing to do well, like drawing an egg, and I was honoured to make the attempt.

My pictures are currently carried by Gallery 78, in Fredericton. I am showing at Tuck Studio in Saint John and have soloed and appeared in group shows throughout New Brunswick. I am in the collection of the New Brunswick Art Bank’s CollectionArtNB.

I have done public art projects, and I recommend them heartily. They force you to be flexible and collaborative. I have done a mural for École Arc-en-ciel in Oromocto, and a sculpture for the town of Florenceville-Bristol.

I am doing more commissions. I like them because they make me try new approaches, and unfamiliar subject matter.

Birds have been showing themselves in my drawings constantly for years, probably because they are always around, once you are looking for them. They are nature, movement, freedom, natural cycles, and sometimes they are just birds. Mapping, too, has become a major subject. Though, for everything I do, the underlying theme is memory. How does memory edit experience? What happens to the world when your memory changes?

I work with dip pen and ink. Because every ink mark is permanent, it is an exciting medium to use. Dip pens, too, have a very slight modulation of line that technical pens do not. It adds a shimmering movement to the drawing.

What led you to become an artist?

I had always drawn, but at an impressionable age I read Syd Hoff’s “How to be a Cartoonist”. That is when I decided to discard my dinosaur-digging career dreams, and concentrate on doodling. I still am, though they are larger and framed now.

How did your training and experience help you to create and innovate in your artistic practice?

When I lived in Montreal, I loved the life pageant around me. I started looking and listening, jotting things down, sketching, and turning life into drawings. I decided I was going to get published in The New Yorker, and that taught me production discipline, and greatly improved my drawing. When my mother succumbed to Alzheimer’s, I turned to landscape and maps, ancient and modern, paying more attention to the physical space around me, figuring out how memory shapes your world. And moving to Florenceville acquainted me with the world of birds, which has changed me.

What stimulates you most about your practice?

I would draw constantly anyway, but the discipline of having finished art things to get done has made me work more, and more consistently. And the more I do, the better I get, and the more ideas I have. That’s a rush.

What motivates your creativity?

Neurosis is where it starts. Whenever I have to think, or group listen, I doodle and that helps me concentrate. It is how my brain screens out all the cerebral distractions and creates focus. I have grown to love it, and since I discovered (in the last few years) I get better if I work more, I plan on continuing more or less fulltime until the end. I will be buried in a shirt ruined by a felt tip pen in the breast pocket.

How has living and working in New Brunswick helped and/or inspired you on your journey?

Mapping has been a very big part of my work these last few years, mostly circling around New Brunswick and the Saint John River system. I have watched Saint John change over the last fifty-five years, and that is a remarkable thing. A city is a living thing, and it is an honour to witness its change. That goes for the non-city sections, too. The more you are aware of the history and the geography, the clearer you can see the land undulating, shifting, and changing underneath your feet.

How does your creative process unfold as you create an artwork?

If I am working on something like a map, I look at maps and atlases. Then I put them away and rely on my memory, to screen out unimportant details. I do a lot of quick sketches for larger projects, to settle the composition. Then I rough it out in pencil. All the details come out as I fill in the drawing with pen and ink. That’s where the problem solving and fabulous new ideas pop in, and sometimes major compositional shifts, because everything you do in dip pen is permanent. When the ink goes on, the final decisions are made. Then I add colour with inks and watercolour, and augment with more drawing ink, if necessary. I know roughly how it will turn out when I am starting, but I never really know if it works as a finished drawing until a week or so after it’s done. I enjoy the process so much, I have to let time pass before I can judge the drawing as a product.

Why do you think it's important to make art and pursue an artistic career?

I can only speak for myself. I draw like other people work on cars. My constant drawing has dragged me into a particular sector of the world, art, where people have for thousands of years been trying to make sense of their world with their hands. I am proud to be a part of it.

A career is important because then you get the chance to work more, to improve and focus and grow. And making money means someone takes you seriously.

What have you learned about yourself and the artistic community through your work?

I prefer closing my door and pulling eight-hour drawing days, because I love it, and I know it is the only way to get better. But I am also becoming more and more interested in the other side of an art practice, the community, and the structures. I worked for years in the early morning of teacher days, so having the luxury of circulating in the art world now is a nice change.

I have learned I enjoy commission work, because it makes me do things I wasn’t even thinking of.

What do you think is the impact of artists' work on communities and the province as a whole?

If art you see on the wall, or in a gallery, or on the street on your way to work, makes you think about something, then it has done its job. If you live and look at art, it makes you think.

Describe what you are most proud of in your career.

My progress, which remains hidden until I see older stuff of mine.

What advice would you give to emerging artists?

None. Only those genuinely infected by the bug are going to keep making art to the point where they are good at it. And they are already beyond all counsel. I hope they enjoy the ride.