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Deshon Smith

Filipino American Queer Artist in Dallas

Deshon Smith is a Dallas-based Filipino American artist whose vibrant paintings move between personal history, family remembrance and queer identity. As a Filipino adoptee raised in rural southwest Wisconsin, he approaches portraiture as a way to reconnect with cultural inheritance and honour the people who shaped him.

Following the meeting of his biological sisters and the loss of his father in 2026, Smith’s practice became an intimate record of life across past and present. Colour carries pride, emotion and influence: bold, expansive and deliberately visible, it invites others to recognise themselves and claim the histories that make them whole.