Gary Ernest Smith, “Barn for Me,” 20×30 in.

After a hit Broadway musical, the curious presentation of an animated TV show, and a live-action series on plural wives—each more popular than could have been anticipated—it may be hard to believe that there was a recent time when some Latter-day Saints, except when on a mission, didn’t feel comfortable talking about their religion except among themselves. And it may be the greater paradox that this urge to secrecy was often greatest in the new Zion, in the place where the LDS Church exercised its strongest sway. Yet for four young artists whose profound beliefs included the conviction that they ought to be able to encode their deepest spiritual experiences in their paintings and sculpture, this reticence of an entire culture was a form of resistance for which they were not prepared.

Artists throughout much of history have been progressively inclined, often well ahead of their contemporaries. Consider the efforts of Utah artists to save the Great Salt Lake, which after half a decade has finally seen some support from the State and the Church—though the desire of some to save the lake is now believed to be flagging. Sixty years ago, the Art and Belief Movement was begun by a much smaller group: four recently graduated art students. They were the romantic realist painter and sculptor Trevor Southey, the founder and figurehead of the group; figurative painter and sculptor Dennis Smith; Neil Hadlock, the creator of monumental abstract sculpture; and Gary Ernest Smith, whose current exhibition at David Ericson provides the opportunity for this recollection.

To fully appreciate the occasion, it’s helpful to consider that despite their critical and commercial success, none of these four graduates of prestigious art schools enjoyed the sort of careers that were characteristic of those artists who followed in their footsteps over the years. To take just the first and last examples, Southey moved to the San Francisco Bay Area for many of his active years, returning to Utah and a hero’s welcome at the beginning of a new millennium and late in his life. Gary Ernest Smith remained here, but in 1983 was taken on by the then-brand-new Overland Gallery, in Scottsdale, Arizona, and for thirty-five years shipped his work there to be shown and sold—primarily, it is said, to collectors actively involved in the modern agricultural enterprises his work so decisively celebrates. It may still be easier to be a prophet somewhere else.

Installation view of Gary Ernest Smith’s work at David Ericson Fine Art with, from left, “Boy Outdoors,” “Carbon County,” “Woman of the Fields,” and “Show Country.” A work by Jeff Pugh, Smith’s son-in-law, can be seen through the fireplace. Image by Geoff Wichert.

Gary Ernest Smith is a splendid example of the realization that there is no longer an impenetrable partition between representation and abstraction in mainstream art. His most characteristic subject is a figure that has been abstracted sufficiently to give him or her—he divides his work pretty evenly between male and female subjects—a modern, even somewhat stylized look. Geometry often plays a part in his settings, such as the images of crops seen in “Keating Hayfield,” “Sunburnt Field,” and “Binding.” There is more than a bit of an iconic quality here, though Smith never entirely abandons the real, individual memory, event, or person wrapped up in the icon. “Garden Flowers,” we are told, was inspired by his wife, whose image was then divided between her figure portrait and a role in representing—check out her hat if this strains belief—the dispersal of the spirit of the cowboy throughout today’s Westerners.

Aside from geometry, one of Smith’s most useful tools for pulling his subjects away from the romantic and moribund past and into the flourishing—but still challenging—present is the powerful outdoor light that illuminates even as it threatens to overwhelm all that it reveals, abstracting what we see without ever quite dissolving it. David Ericson, whose gallery represented Smith before Overland took over and will continue to do so now, describes him as “doing Rothko with farms and the West,” by which he means the way Smith’s separate, luminous realms, much like Rothko’s clouds of color—say for instance a red barn shading to black beneath a blue sky rimmed in white—are capable of creating emotional and even spiritual feelings about the scene. It’s an effect impossible to capture in a photograph, but quickly and deeply felt in person. A viewer may also think of the way strong light is so often matched by dark shadows, so the eye struggles to handle either in the presence of both. How many photographic images, portraits in particular, have been ruined by contrast too great for the camera to accommodate? In the past, this was one of the things painters could do for us; rein in the light so that both extremes became visible in a single view. But Smith is not one of those painters. He celebrates that bold light, which he employs both to identify his locations and make them look genuine.

Gary Ernest Smith, “Sunburnt Field,” 24×30 in.

Gary Ernest Smith, “Keating Hayfield,” 24×30 in.

One of the things Smith spoke of at the exhibition opening was more than a dozen members of his social and artistic circle who have recently died. He is clearly aware that more than one generation has passed through the gallery during his career. Modernism, once a new force in world culture, now addresses us primarily through the proverbial rearview mirror. A splendid example can be seen in his “In the Garden,” a family portrait of father, mother, and child that layers together the Garden of Eden, the Holy Family, a trio of 19th-century settlers, and a twentieth century lesson in shared parenting. A Contemporary or Post-Modern artist might have given them an ethnic identity, a more significant location, or thrown together elements from several sources. It appeared that the audience at the opening didn’t miss any such elaboration.

That’s not to say, of course, that this sophisticated audience wouldn’t appreciate those innovations if seen in art works by some younger artists. The good thing about Gary Ernest Smith’s modernized image of the West is that it is still up to date. Where a lesser artist might have stuck in time and become a stubborn anachronism, his West goes on evolving. The past is prologue, but each canvas is a new chapter.

Gary Ernest Smith, “Headed for Fruit Springs,” 36×40 in.

Gary Ernest Smith, David Ericson Fine Art, Salt Lake City, through June 12.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.