Born in 1951 in Derby, England, he is an artist living and working in Montréal, Québec.

Smith completed his Foundation Studies in 1971 at St. Albans College of Art and his BFA in 1974 at Falmouth College of Art in England. After immigrating to Canada in 1978, Smith completed his MFA in 1983 at Concordia University in Montréal, Québec. Smith's contemporary oil paintings of landscapes and seascapes investigate the relationship between image and abstraction, as well as memory and performance. Interested in illusions of illuminated space, Smith explores how light can be both incidental and instrumental to landscape paintings. Using an expressive impasto, he creates a visual language that tells a history of moments where atmospheric conditions have made claims on particular places. Ripped, jagged backgrounds and stormy explosions give way to streams of water, light, and cloud, creating places that are "both exquisite and tremendously disturbing."