Dallas Artist Grant D. Smith Creates Artwork for Our Lady Peace ''Healthy in Paranoid Times''; Record Release: August 30,2005.

DALLAS -- Alternative rock band Our Lady Peace has commissioned Dallas artist Grant D. Smith to create a painting for the cover of their 6th major release, Healthy in Paranoid Times. OLP have sold over 6 million albums worldwide, recently played at the Live Aid concert to raise funds for Africa, and will open their tour off with shows opening for the Rolling Stones.

The Toronto based band formed in 1992, and received their first break when Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, formerly of Led Zeppelin, heard the band's song Starseed, and contacted the band to open for them. The band has received countless accolades, and was invited to play at Woodstock 1999.

Grant has known the band for 9 years, and was contacted in January to create a painting for the new album. According to Smith, "The band asked me to come to Maui with them where they record with Metallica's producer Bob Rock. We talked about the world we live in and the issues that face our culture. Issues such as political propaganda, a sensationalist media, blind faith, and micro- macrocosm were a few of the things we discussed. We liked the idea of a man with his back turned to the world, in a white blank room. Is the whiteness purity and peace that he seeks, or the stark whiteness of a mental ward? Its just a guy who has had enough, everything has gotten too heavy and he needs a break from it all. He hasn't given up or surrendered, just created an enlightened microcosm. The final version is the 9th cover I painted." The band also commissioned Smith to paint portraits of each one of them, which will be sold as prints on the bands website, www.ourladypeace.com.

Grant's work is in numerous collections around the country, and was recently showcased on MTV's Cribs, while on tour of Red Sox All-Star Johnny Damon's home. Most of Smith's paintings use sports as a platform to tell the story of life. Redefining a genre that usually is illustrational and void of concept, he wants the sports aspect to be a metaphor for childlike innocence and the art to be social commentary.