A Conversation with Brian Smith

How a self-taught artist became one of the biggest artists in the Sorcery world.

A cool breeze rustles the palm fronds as I stare out the window while vacationing in San Diego. I have been sitting here dwelling on a proper way to segway into the first of what I hope are many interviews. The challenge is that my mind constructs the images of this artist and tries to reconcile that with the delightful and happy person that I know him to be. Perhaps it is this dichotomy that most fascinates me, or us, with Brian Smith. His work in Sorcery is instantly identifiable as Erik Olofsson has done the unthinkable in modern times of combining disparate hand painted artistic styles into a cohesive vision that is Sorcery: The Contested Realm. Brian’s pieces in Alpha range from some of the most awe inspiring landscapes in The Colour out of Space to his whimsy in the eponymous Pudge Butcher.

This sets the backdrop for this interview. Brian Smith has found himself as one of the most beloved artists in Sorcery. His distinctive style comes off as moody, sinuous, dark, sometimes brooding. His style amongst his peers carves out his own space. At the same time he is learning how to be a part of a trading card game. Seeing the demands of his fans and exceeding all expectations. How did this self taught artist get here? What sparks him creatively? What were those key formative experiences on his artistic journey? I had the pleasure of talking to Brian for a lengthy conversation where we dug deeper into some of what makes Brian so special.

Brian Smith grew up in Los Angeles in the 1970’s as the art scene of LA was blossoming but he was surrounded by his own unique artistic influences. He grew up with a fascination of painting and other artistic forms but he did not experiment with painting until he was 35 years old. He didn't attend art school, nor did he get training when he decided to jump into the painting world. He was inspired by his family, his early artistic influences in various forms of media, and most importantly a drive to paint, for the rest of his life if he could.

As a self-taught artist Brian Smith spent many years experimenting with painting. Having started only in 2007 he has spent much of this time determining what worked to his eye. His experimentation led him to discover several techniques that he still uses throughout his paintings today. He also developed his palette in this time offering a wonderful juxtaposition of colors. To Sorcery fans this palette may be most prominent in “The Colour out of Space” where Brian blends beautiful turquoises with yellow and magenta to create an other-worldly landscape.

The painting process of something like “Colour out of Space”, originally named “Somehow Nothing” is something that is still elusive to Brian. “...to this day I want to try that again; and I do try, but it doesn’t seem to work. It’s funny how that happens. The past few months I’ve done some abstract…paintings that you’ve seen that are kind of similar I guess, maybe, but they still aren’t quite the same. Sometimes that happens…you get kind of lucky and you’re not sure how you did it and you hope that someday you can do it again.”

“Venus”, Brian Smith, 2025

The use of a rag is one of those profound discoveries in Brian’s painting career. “I use a rag to just wipe paint off that isn’t working. It’s the closest thing to a back button. At some point I realized, wow, this is one of the most important things that I figured out about painting.” The rag allows Brian to blend, remove, and add texture as he sculpts the underlying wet oil paints. “I usually use a bed sheet, cut it up into little sections, and I use them almost as much as I use a paintbrush.”

The pursuit for creating paintings that are “right” is a common thread in Brian’s work. The rag being one of those tools at his disposal to craft a canvas. This correction and perfecting of his work is a constant process though. “Oh yeh, I still do that, I probably do it more now than I used to. During the process from one day to the next,…I might think I’m on to something and then the next day I look at it and (I) just think there’s nothing there and it needs to be fixed. Sometimes that happens weeks later, sometimes months, in some cases it’s years later. I’m looking around now and I see pieces that I did several years ago that I know I can make them look better if I just dive back in and sand off parts of the painting. It seems kind of never ending.”

“Sunrise”, Brian Smith, 2008

What is “right” when it comes to art though, is it a perfect composition? This illusive property of “right” is illdefined. “When I think of that, I guess what comes to mind is that nothing catches my eye as being out of place. If it does, then it’s just not right. To me it feels like if you look at it and take in the whole thing at once, then it’s right. It worked. And that’s what I struggle with now, things will catch your eye and they look out of place and it just looks wrong to me…Sometimes it’s just a matter of something that the painting needs.”

“Second Star”, Brian Smith, 2019

One piece that illustrates this is “Second Star” which went through many changes over the years. As one gazes at “Second Star” there is a unique use of the space allowing for the eye to wander around the painting discovering new things. However, it feels impossible to not have to pull your eye away from the star in the top left corner. “That was a cosmic figure that I painted and I remember thinking there needs to be something else going on in that painting…I think I added that red…It’s kind of like a star exploded and there’s a little bit left almost like a Death Star. Then that didn’t seem like it was enough either. So I added that bright star in the top left corner because it looked like she was gazing at something off in space and that was it. It wasn’t until I added that little star that the painting looked complete.” “Second Star” was also retouched after several years (2019) to change the structure of the dress. Adding more blues and shapes to the state it is in today.

Many might describe Brian’s art as dark or moody. Even fellow Sorcery artists like Sam McKinnon noted “(Brian’s) artwork is instantly recognizable by (his) unique style that has obscure undertones.” However, Brian doesn’t necessarily see his pieces as dark ... dark depictions maybe. “I know some are darker than others, and for Sorcery I’ve been asked to do some that were kind of dark, but I guess I see it goes back to psychology. In a way where I see it more as that it represents something dark. It’s not really meant to be like a monster or creature, but it represents something that is scary to us…maybe guilt or doubt or regret. I grew up watching Twilight Zone when I was a kid and I just love those because…there are some monsters…but it’s more about people that feel like they are losing their minds. That is scarier than anything to me. These people feel like they’re alone and they’re trying to figure out what’s going on, and maybe they are losing their minds, but maybe they’re not.”

The textures that Brian is able to capture are some of the most striking in Sorcery. In talking with fellow Sorcery artist Lindsey Crummett, she also wondered where Brian got some of the inspiration from his textures. “...he injects some very cool textures into his pieces that are reminiscent to me of textures in nature.”

Brian draws inspiration for these textures from various places. H.R. Giger and Beksinski’s work played a role in Brian developing the sinuous forms present in works like “Magnetic Muzzle”. However, some of the textures we see in Brian’s work today go back to deep rooted memories of his father’s furniture work. In the 1970’s and 1980’s Brian’s father worked with creating acrylic furniture. The color striations found in that furniture can also be seen in colorful glass ashtrays that Brian keeps in his workspace for inspiration. However he admits he comes nowhere close to capturing their beauty and elegance on the canvas.

Brian Smith’s father’s acrylic furniture creations from the 1970’s

Brian’s earliest artistic influences can be traced back to his home as a young child. “My dad and my brother were both really good artists. My dad was a sign maker, he used to draw airplanes and cars. And my brother, who’s six years older than me, he learned from our dad. I used to just kind of watch what they would do. I was really impressed. I never tried to do it myself, but they used to kind of compete with each other and I just watched that and I think I learned a lot from them.”

Hundertwasser book, 1973

He also recalls the large impact of a small book by Hundertwasser “my mom had this little book…on our coffee table. Some of my oldest memories are being…I don’t know three, four, five years old and seeing this little book. Looking through it and just thinking it was such a neat little artifact. This book has foiling on the art. So, you know, as a little kid this was like a magical thing to me. I think this is where I might have even had some early thoughts about making art. I’ve never seen anything else like this guy did…how important something like that was at an early age and how maybe without that book being there my life would have been completely different.”

In the late 1970’s and 80’s more iconic work entered Brian’s sphere and started being absorbed by him. “Growing up…I was a kid in the 70’s, the album covers were a big thing. But there was also video game art. I used to play standup video games at arcades and they had really neat illustrations on the walls on the side. There were a lot of magazines back then that had a lot of really cool art. There’s just so many different things that I was exposed to.” Movies like Alien (1979), which were strongly shaped by H.R. Giger’s work in the film. Giger’s volumes of work, Necronomincon in the mid-80’s were also a hallmark of any worthwhile bookstore at the time. As one can imagine, it was also through Brian’s older brother that he experienced things “my brother was six years older than me, so I was into the things he was into. Like when I was eight years old The Wall came out and he was listening to Pink Floyd. So that became a part of something that was happening for me at that time. Where if I didn’t have an older brother (it) probably wouldn’t have been important to me. To this day, all these years later that’s still some of my favorite music. You know, without my brother turning me onto that, I would have missed out on it…”

Untitled, Brian Smith, pencil drawing

At some point in his early years Brian had reached capacity of what artistic merits a typical bookstore like Crown Books could provide. So to further quench his appetite for art, Brian went to the library. The library offered a glimpse at artists beyond just Salvador Dali. Brian would spend hours absorbing the visuals and yet still he didn’t paint. It wasn’t until his mid-30’s that Brian took the plunge into painting. Until then Brian had been scratching his art itch with pencil drawings. Eventually in 2007, at age 35, Brian mustered up a simple game plan, he was going to quit his job and paint. Foolhardy? Maybe. Ambitious? Not necessarily. Brian had come to terms with himself. He had known for a lot of his life that all he wanted to do was be a painter. Combining this drive with positive encouragement from his family and a relatively low cost of living, Brian embarked on his painting journey.

One thing Brian was able to do early in his career was leverage what we would later call social media platforms. Facebook at the time was still a question mark of survivability, what with MySpace and Friendster before it, but Brian saw an opportunity to reach people with his art. A central place where hundreds of eyeballs might fall in love with something he had created. From 2007 to 2018 Brian was almost entirely reliant on his self-produced paintings and posting them on Facebook and Instagram. An occasional commission but these were few and far between. It’s as if Brian needed the next decade of expression and discovery to release the pent up artistic ideas from his 30 plus years of holding back on his passion. “You know when I was a kid, I was just absorbing all of that information and it’s all kind of coming out now, I guess, in a way.”

In 2018 Erik Olofsson reached out to Brian about creating art for a new game he was designing, Sorcery: the Contested Realm. Brian had never been involved with trading card games personally or professionally up to this point in his life. As to why Erik reached out to him, Brian thinks Erik probably saw some of the metal album covers he had done. “I did indeed see metal band covers that he made,” Erik said when I asked him about how Brian came to be in the Sorcery world. “I thought his simpler graphical and abstract style would suit small cards very well.” Brian was commissioned for several art pieces in the Alpha set of Sorcery. The art direction from Erik was typically minimal, providing guidance where needed but mostly letting the artists express their own style in the paintings.

“Pudge Butcher”, Brian Smith, 2019

As Brian was new to the world of card game design, he was open to ideas and guidance in the creation of this new media. For example, how often is one going to be commissioned to paint a largely overweight character with a giant scythe? This of course happened to Brian when it came to Pudge Butcher. Pudge is actually one piece where Erik was able to help guide Brian in the visual “pop” necessary for a small playing card. “That was entirely Erik’s idea. I think the original Pudge had either a black hook or it might have even been a rusty orange. And Erik, it was his idea to make it blue so that it would stand out. I think he also wanted to add the chains on the bottom. Yeh, he was right, the blue is what made it pop because everything else is pretty muted. So it needed something like that…his ideas are usually along those lines. Something that really adds some pop to the image and it always makes it better. I’ve learned to trust his judgement there.” Seeing only the composition in the final form it’s hard to imagine it being any different.

For the past few years Brian has been immersed in Sorcery work. From official Erik’s Curiosa commissions to the beautiful artist proof work he does. “I can’t believe that I stumbled into something as great as Sorcery and not just another card game that isn’t having this kind of effect on people…I’m just enjoying the ride and I’m just curious to see where things go from here because it’s still so early in the history of the game.”

As to what Brian sees of the gameplay of Sorcery, “it does seem like it’s a whole universe being created right in front of us. And as the cards come out all these new figures and places just add to that and it can just grow and grow.” And as the game grows and succeeds, so do the artists that embrace it. For Brian, he put himself in a position to succeed and was able to capture that when the opportunity came. “At the time I felt like as long as I’m making paintings that I think are good and every now and again, I do one that I think is really good, maybe, then I felt that was enough. I thought that I could live the rest of my life, this would be great…I was not making much money but I was doing exactly what I wanted to do with my time and I felt like that’s as much as you could ever hope for in life.”

Marvin Morfbeats

Brian is still continually adapting and adjusting to the world around him. He is a consumer of Instagram as much as the next person. Finding inspiration in the doldrums of the internet. Recently, Brian purchased a “Marvin” from Morfbeats, thanks to his newfound Sorcery success. This eccentric medieval looking torture device is actually a musical instrument that Brian feels produces sounds that might exist in some of the visual spaces he creates. To me, as a lay person, it reminds me of the orchestral sounds found in shows like "Hannibal" or captured in movies like "The Cell". Otherworldly sounds that transport and unnerve the audience, making them question what it is they are experiencing. This continual searching for betterment in his art is perhaps the most profound thing I’ve learned about Brian in my time talking with him. He is ever the student of the world on a path of self-discovery in his artistic forms. How lucky that we as the audience get to experience the outcome of his ponderings with every new piece he creates and shares with us.

Thanks to Brian for sitting down and sharing his thoughts on his process and history with me. He is a joy to talk to. This article was written based upon e-mail communications up to a recorded interview that took place on August 14th, 2025. -Neil