"In 1980 John Noel Smith moved from Dublin to Berlin with the intention of remaining in Germany for perhaps twelve months; twenty-two years later he finally returned to his native country.
Yet John Noel Smith's long exile should not be regretted since it proved beneficial for the development of his work, a maturing process which, like that of certain other artists, could only have taken place at some distance from Ireland.
John Noel Smith could be reckoned the painterly equivalent of Samuel Beckett, the eloquence of both men being achieved through the disciplined disposition of their respective languages.”
ROBERT O'BYRNE,
DICTIONARY OF LIVING IRISH ARTISTS,
PLURABELLE PUBLISHING 2010, PAGE 356

”...What I paint about is the issue of identity, and part of my identity is composed of being Irish...”
(John Noel Smith, exhibition catalogue, Royal Hibernian Academy Dublin, September-October 2002, page 17)

John Noel Smith's ongoing exploration of his identity has inevitably prompted the artist to examine his country's long history and to return to its Primal era.

As a result, his work has focused on one of Ireland's most Primal language forms, the early alphabet system known as Ogham. The different letters of the Ogham alphabet were formed by combinations of lines incised along the edge of a memorial stone and have been transformed into the vibrant imagery of the present work by Smith's bold impasto style.

Born in Dublin 1952, John Noel Smith studied at the Dun Laoghaire School of Art and undertook post-graduate study in Berlin. He has exhibited extensively at many galleries such as The Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast; The Green on Red Gallery, Dublin; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; Purdy Hicks Gallery, London, and the Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin.

Having lived and worked in Germany for many years, he was the subject of a retrospective at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin in 2002, shortly after his return to Ireland.