Colette Odya Smith

Biography

A Milwaukee native, Colette Odya Smith is a widely exhibited, award-winning pastel painter whose 'intimate landscapes' skirt the edge of realism and abstraction. She has exhibited regionally and nationally for 15 years, winning numerous awards including multiple honors in the "Pastel Journal", "The Artist’s Magazine", "International Artist" (formerly Pastel Artist International) and "American Artist" competitions. She was featured in a story in “American Artist” in 2005 and in the "Pastel Journal" in 2010.

Her work is in many private and corporate collections including Northwestern Mutual, Waukesha Memorial Hospital, Deloitte and Touche LLP, and Acuity Insurance. She is in the permanent collection of the Wichita Center for the Arts. In 2006 Ms. Smith was named one of "75 Women of Influence" in the arts by the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel arts writer, who credited her work among the "artworks I (she) most wanted to take home".

Ms. Smith majored in Fine Art, Humanities and Education at Macalester College and studied soft pastels at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She teaches workshops at the Peninsula Art School in Door County, WI.

Ms. Smith is represented by the Katie Gingrass Gallery in Milwaukee, WI, Woodwalk Gallery in Egg Harbor, WI, Richeson Art School and Gallery in Kimberly, WI, and Brio Gallery in Galena, IL.