Les E. Smutz, is a self-taught professional artist, muralist, architectural embellishment artisan and owner of a custom home design and home improvement business (Windsor Castles, LLC). Having explored numerous avenues of art, he is also a wood craftsman, photographer, stained glass artist, writer, musician/songwriter and maybe more...he is still exploring. 

His oil paintings and drawings are mostly about beauty and romance and usually include one or more of the following: clouds, water, female figure(s). He is not about making statements, just about appreciation of the beauty of the world around us and the images to which his eye is drawn or his imagination wanders. 

Although Les is primarily self-taught and has drawn and painted most of his life to one degree or another, his mentoring with regard to serious pursuit of art as a career began with a couple of talented high school friends and was further nurtured by studying the works of the great Victorian romanticists: WJ Waterhouse, WA Bouguereau, Sir Francis Dicksee, Godward and many others. In 1998 he decided to learn portraiture and practiced drawing faces from magazines, friends and family until he could produce a pretty fair likeness, first in graphite, then colored pencil and finally in oils.  When people began asking him to draw their family members he decided it was time to go to the next level and opened a studio in Exeter, CA in 2003, then moved it to Visalia, CA in 2004, where he was represented by Easelheads Gallery. In 2005, personal reasons prompted a move to Phoenix, AZ, where he now lives and works. 

Les' art is in collections throughout the US, Canada and Australia and he is open to commissions and gallery representation. For sales or any other inquiries, please contact the artist via email through the CONTACT page on this site.