Born August 18, 1981 in La Mirada, California, Kevin Alan Smola II has been artistically inclined since childhood. After his parents divorced when he was three, Kevin’s mother Caryn took her family (which included younger brother Christopher) to Indianapolis.

In primary school, Kevin prided himself as the only six-year-old to color inside the lines. His early education was dominated by art classes, perhaps not by number, but certainly by significance. Often Kevin would draw portraits from magazines and other publications while he honed his eye for composition and form.

By the time Kevin attended high school in the fall of 1995, he had already determined his curriculum. It was to be art, naturally. He absorbed all that he could with intense focus and attention to detail. Kevin was acutely aware of abstract art and found it to be curiously interesting. Never experimenting with it before this point left him eager to open the creative floodgates repressing his need to expand his artistic horizons.

After graduating in 1999, he spent his first year of college at a community college where his mother was working. She worked three jobs while he was in school to support Kevin and his brother. He concentrated on his core curriculum and then transferred to the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville a year later for a degree in graphic design. Despite his ambition, Kevin was always indifferent toward art schools and felt his work may be compromised by subjective opinions that would only discourage him from continuing on the path he was on. Although this experience comes mostly from a self-taught education in fine art, he remained pensive. His inspiration came from the likes of the American and European Abstract Expressionists who, in their day, were the epitome of a unique creativity and freedom that passed through them, to the canvas, and ultimately to the viewer in the most natural way.

Smola wanted to wield that arresting power within his work. He knew to achieve this he had to be bold. He put down the brush and picked up putty knives, scrapers, and window washers that created evocative textures he still employs today. By the time he had graduated college in that spring of 2003, he had grown more aggressive with the paint, but completely in tune with what was playing out.

Kevin continues to paint what inspires him. However, he doesn’t just paint for himself, he paints for those who gain a better understanding of what he is trying to accomplish. "Art is a transferrence of inspiration. Without it, you have nothing. Whether it is a bird, a tree, a mountainside, or your most meaningful moment, paint it and you will find it. I never paint without being inspired, it just doesn’t make sense."

Kevin was awarded the 2005-2006 Stutz Artist Association's Studio Residency Grant, where he continues to paint in the Stutz building in studio A350.