About James Smith

James Smith is an award-winning sculptor and painter whose work has been exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

James took up art after a career as a geologist and geophysicist. He grew up in a tenement building and later a council house in Glasgow, near Clydebank, and moved with his family to north London as a teenager. As a young man, he did national service in the RAF, followed by a part time degree in geology and physics at Chelsea Polytechnic in London, while working in a physics research lab. He spent two years working in the oil industry in Libya, completed a degree in Applied Geophysics back in the UK at the University of Birmingham, and then worked for two-years in Sicily and central Italy. He went on to have a long career with British Gas, latterly as exploration manager, mapping deep structures in the North Sea using seismic data.

Although James had created art for many years, it was after taking early retirement that he took up sculpting and painting in earnest. Having previously completed a part-time degree in psychology, which piqued his interest in psychological perceptions of art, he took courses at City Lit and Amersham College in order to access their glazes and kilns, and completed a diploma in ceramics. Now, after sculpting his works in clay, glazing them and having them fired, he often has them cast in bronze or bronze resin. He has exhibited his work around the UK, was featured at the Victoria & Albert Museum in an exhibition inspired by the museum’s collections and won the British Institute Fund Award at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

James’ work is influenced by Rodin. He takes inspiration from many places, including collections in the British Museum and the V&A, his many painting trips (including to Nepal, Morocco, Italy, Greece, France, Scotland and Cornwall) and forms from the natural world. He has learned a great deal from his good friend, the representational sculptor Ann Hogben. 

James Smith lives in Highgate, in a home filled with his drawings, oil and watercolour paintings and sculptures.