Libby Smith

Libby Smith has been a classically trained artist for over 35 years specializing in portraiture and figurative.  She loves to paint in oil or watercolor, but is also proficient with many other mediums.

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One thing that makes Libby Smith a bit different is that she is visually impaired. She has lost most of her sight, yet her work has increased in skill and beauty. With the recent rapid sight loss, she has worked constantly trying to paint as much as possible "memorizing the world" while still possible.

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Always specializing in portraits and figurative, she has branched out to include more subjects to celebrate the vibrancy of our planet and its inhabitants. Libby has been painting fervently the subject matters nearest to her heart, the beauty of this earth and all that reside in it. 

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It amuses her that everyone considers her work realistic because she sees it as abstract. She can only "see" at about 1 inch away, which is a blurry extreme closeup of every brush stroke. When she steps away, the painting disappears totally, blurring into nothingness. She uses her phone to get the entire image within her 1 inch viewing distance. In the average painting, she will take hundreds of photos just trying to see what she just painted, which is a time-consuming labor of love. 

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After 40 years of actively trying to master oils, she has been transitioning into sculpture and pottery in preparation for total vision loss, and this has taken a lot of her time lately. She may not be able to continue painting soon, but she will always continue her passion of creating and showing the world around her in her own light.