The giving and receiving of pleasure isn’t simply the subject in Smith’s work, though: a kind of intensely patterned, highly decorative visual delight is intrinsic to his form, too. Influenced in part by the jewel-like surfaces of Gustav Klimt, as well as the graphic immediacy and pictorial concentration of the classic comic strip, Smith’s work holds explicit storytelling at bay, preferring instead to imply narratives of erotic abandon, loneliness and excess.