Art Basel Miami II. Mark T Smith’s opening.

January 10th, 2011

Isn’t it grand when you can combine great food and a cool art opening? Well, that’s exactly what happened when I recently went down to Art Basel Miami. My artist Mark T. Smith had many of his paintings and a few of his new sculptures on view at Soyka’s Restaurant. The mood was festive and many of his friends and collectors joined him during the evening.

I met Mark T. through one of my artists, Rudy Gutierrez. They have been good friends over the years, and got to know each other when Mark T. was living in New York. Rudy thought that he would be a wonderful addition to my Art on a Grand Scale group. After looking at his website, I agreed. His work is bold, colorful, lively and extremely eye catching. As the size of his canvas increases, so to does the power of the art. He is a natural for large scale projects. Recently, he has also joined our illustration group.
Before Mark’s Art Basel solo show I had not seen his sculptures. They have a very similar feel to his paintings. I’ve always thought that Mark has drawn a great deal of his inspiration from African and Australian aboriginal motifs and this became even more evident with the new sculptures.

We shared some gossip and some laughs, and later that evening had a wonderful dinner with a small group of his friends. It is great that Mark has his studio in Miami Beach so that while we were down there we could go to the various fairs and parties together. We even had time to talk about our mutual passion: cars. It doesn’t get much better than that.