Named by her botanist father after the evergreen shrub, Kalmia latifolia, or mountain laurel, painter and multimedia artist Kalmia Smith grew up in Connecticut and has spent most of her later life in the Pacific Northwest, living in Montana, Oregon, Alaska, Hawaii and California. She holds a BFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BA in English from American University. She also studied at the University of California, Berkeley during the Mario Salvo free-speech movement and at Mill College with the late visual artist Jay DeFeo, who together with Ivan Madjrakoff and Miriam Schapiro were important influences on her work. She has exhibited widely, including at the Diego Rivera Gallery at the San Francisco Art Institute, the University of Alaska, the Visual Arts Center in Anchorage, Alaska, the Paris Gibson Square Art Center in Great Falls, Montana, and most recently, the Walking Man Gallery in Kalispel, Montana.  

It is only after a painting is done that she begins to see the vision in her artwork. After completion she continues to discover what her work is saying. She finds that her paintings continue to be close, like family, even years after they have been finished. She believes these paintings keep talking, inviting viewers to enjoy her art and welcoming them to visit with its spirit. She is an intuitive painter who chooses colors by feeling and paints lines with her emotions. The composition and rational part just come along willingly for the ride. She currently lives with her husband architect Byron Smith in a cabin that he designed and built on Flathead Lake in Montana.