Ivan Smith

Ivan Smith is a South African Artist, Designer and Photographer from the Western Cape, living and working in Cape Town. He is a traditional artist, but his art supplies are digital. 

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Born in Cape Town, Ivan was a precocious child that pursued his artistic vision since childhood growing up in Pietersburg. There, his potential talent first got noticed in high school at the age of 15, when his work got selected to be part of the 13th international children’s school art exhibition in Taipei Taiwan, 1981. 

After school with full colours for art as a matric subject, he studied Art and Design at Pretoria Technican focusing on Textile design. Although not graduating and being told by his lecturers that his work was not commercial and therefore he would never work in the textile industry, a long successful career as a commercial fashion and textile designer followed. Then the recent rise of “fast fashion” it’s unsustainability and negative consequences for the industry, forced him to focus his creativity on more enduring arts. 

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End 2018, hugely inspired by street art, he transitioned to practicing as a full-time artist. Working across disciplines, with an emphasis on mixed-media painting and drawing, creating representational work layered with patterns and colours. Critics found his paintings appeared too “digital” and not painterly enough. Ivan reacted to the criticism by becoming a predominantly digital artist in 2020 and now achieves success by applying his themes and processes in a Pop Art style, widely sold as limited-edition prints.