Eric Drummond Smith is a native of Bluefield, W.Va. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science, art, and geography from Emory & Henry College in Emory, Va.; his master’s degree in East Asian studies from the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Va.; and his Ph.D. in political science with specialties in international and comparative politics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is an associate professor at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, where he is responsible for instruction of courses in the international and comparative politics subfields, as well as most classes in political philosophy and theory. His current research is on the logic of regime change and durability in classical Chinese thought of the Zhou, Qin, and Han Dynasties. Smith regards himself as not fitting well into any particular school of art. His work draws particularly from expressionism and neo-expressionism; surrealism; classical animation, comics, political and propaganda art, and advertising art; pop art; Chinese and Japanese traditional calligraphy, painting, and printing; folk art (particularly Appalachian, Southern, Latin American, Sub-Saharan African, and native American and Polynesian); northern European painting and printmaking of the Renaissance (especially Bosch, Bruegel, and Dürer); ancient Mediterranean and Mesopotamian art; and art brut. He is principally a two-dimensional artist, principally drawing and painting on paper, wood, and canvas (stretched and unstretched). His artistic work intentionally tries to blur the line between fine art and folk art, not to mention exploring the tensions generated by and in politics, history, faith, literature, music, and the ordinary lives of (particularly Appalachian) people.
