Geoff Smith, also known as ‘Speed’ and painting under the name of Speedline Art, spent his early years on his parents’ 4,000 acre farm – 70 miles inland from the town of Esperance on the Western Australia coast. His home town was a one-pub-post-office-and-wheat-silo-town called Grass Patch.
Finishing boarding school at the age of 16, Geoff returned to work on the farm. He travelled to the coast on weekends with a friend and discovered surfing, which has remained a major influence on his way of life throughout the past 36 years.
From an early age he showed a strong interest in art, firstly with pencils and watercolours; then with a set of oils that his elder sister sent home from the city. Being from a rural background, the pursuit of an art career was never seriously considered. Hard labour was the accepted way to make a living. The years from 16 onwards were spent doing several jobs on the land … cropping, harvesting and working in shearing sheds until eventually moving into the building industry and working with stone. Money earned from these stints of work went into funding months of living and surfing on the isolated coastlines of South Australia and Western Australia.
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