Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was born in 1940 on the Flathead Reservation in Montana. She is a member of the Salish and Kootenai Tribes and also of Métis and Shoshone descent. Her work and her life addresses her Native viewpoint and Native American identity – specifically as a woman in these intersections.

As a child, Smith enjoyed creating with natural materials (like sticks and mud), but she specifically remembers being introduced to tempera paints and crayons in the first grade. Growing up with a single father who traded horses and participated in rodeos, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith frequently moved between several reservations in the Pacific Northwest and California. Smith worked alongside migrant workers in Seattle between the ages of 8 and 15, supplementing the family’s little income with farm wages.

In 1960, Smith began her studies in art and achieved an associate of arts degree from Olympic College in Washington State. She also took classes at the University of Washington, but due to various jobs she worked to support herself, Smith’s education was interrupted. In 1976, she received her bachelor’s degree in Art Education at Framingham State College in Massachusetts. She was raising her two sons alone while attending college in multiple places – a story she states is similar to other Native American women her age.

She moved to New Mexico and pursued a Master’s degree in Visual Arts, which she completed in 1980 from the University of New Mexico. Smith recalls that in the 1970s in Santa Fe, only men were allowed to exhibit in galleries. This underlined a tradition she had faced throughout her studies, where she was told multiple times by professors that women couldn’t be artists. This led Jaune Quick-to-See Smith to organize Native American women artists across the United States to move their works into galleries, under Smith’s curation.

Smith’s own works are primarily abstract paintings and prints that address her socio-political views, personal history, and art historical influences. Her pieces include elements of collage, with commercial slogans, petroglyphs, drawings, and layers of text and image. She addresses myths of her ancestors while confronting the destruction of the environment and Euro-American cultural hegemony.

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith has had over eighty solo exhibitions in the last thirty years, while also organizing over thirty Native American exhibitions. She has received several honorary degrees, as well as numerous awards and fellowships. Her works use inspiration from artists such as Picasso, Klee, and Rothko combined with Native American imagery and her personal history.

Smith is one of the most acclaimed Native American artists today. She gives lectures at universities, museums, and conferences around the world. Her works are held in collections from Quito, Ecuador to New York City. Overall, Smith calls herself a cultural art worker as she addresses politics and contemporary American life through her Native perspective.