Matt Smith conveys the hidden beauty of wild places
By Gussie Fauntleroy
This story was featured in the June 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art June 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
Many years ago, back when Matt Smith was still working part-time jobs to fill the income gap while starting to sell his paintings, he happened to have lunch one day with a Scottsdale, AZ, art dealer. “What kind of landscapes do you paint?” the dealer asked. Smith, who didn’t have money to travel far, was spending as much time as possible in the landscape he had loved all his life; he responded that he painted the desert. “You’re wasting your time,” the dealer declared. “I can’t give that kind of painting away!” Smith smiled politely, but he knew he’d been handed an important challenge. “I remember thinking, ‘Oh yeah? I’ll show them the beauty of the desert.’ Because I thought it was a marvelous place.”
And he still does today. The award-winning artist has spent more than three decades showing viewers and collectors the extraordinary beauty he sees in the Sonoran Desert, where he has lived for most of his 59 years. Long ago he learned to appreciate the Sonoran’s rugged topography, subtle grace, and exquisitely diverse plant life. He also seeks out and conveys the wonders of other wild places, from the California coast to high-mountain lakes and canyons around the West. Even a landscape as removed from the desert as an East Texas cypress bog, or the deep greens of Mississippi and Georgia, can leave him in awe. “Beauty is everywhere,” he says. “Wherever I’m standing is my favorite place.”
And the adventure of getting there is half the fun. Smith and his wife, Tracy Avant, who’s also a painter, frequently take off from their home at the northeast edge of Scottsdale with a camper on their pickup truck. They’ll hike and paint in the Colorado Rockies or put it in four-wheel drive to explore canyons in southern Utah. Smith and fellow artists also make horseback excursions deep into backcountry wilderness areas, where they may camp and paint from sunrise to sunset for a week at a time.
SIERRA JEWEL [see page 49], which will be in this year’s Prix de West Invitational show, emerged from photos and field sketches made on one such trip. Smith and several artist friends rode horses into the Sierras in California and camped at about 10,000 feet at the foot of the Minarets (a series of jagged peaks) near Iceberg Lake—appropriately named, since in early September large chunks of ice still floated in it from the previous winter. Back home in his studio, he created the painting of a pond below Iceberg Lake. He was especially enamored with the “absolute pristine beauty of the water. You could see right down to the bottom of the pond,” he says. “It was just glorious, one of the prettiest places I’ve ever been.”
Smith has been to a lot of glorious natural places, although for years most of his adventures took place in arid regions—dry washes and canyons watched over by towering saguaro and rock cliffs. His father’s work for Motorola moved the family from Kansas City, MO, to Scottsdale when Matt was 3 years old. Whenever he wasn’t drawing—which he’s been doing nonstop since he was a toddler—he was exploring the desert and catching lizards and snakes for the terrarium in his room.
Smith’s mother had been an art history major and painted for her own pleasure. The family had a small collection of original art, which occasionally brought professional artists to the home. It was during these visits that Matt first glimpsed the possibility of art as a career. Then, when Matt was 11, his father received an assignment in Toulouse, France, and the family lived there for two years. The great museums of Europe blew his conception of art wide open. The first time he visited the Louvre, Smith remembers being astonished by the immense size of much of the artwork. He was especially impressed with the dedication he knew was required to create on that scale.
After three years back in Arizona, the Smiths spent a year in Geneva on another of his father’s work assignments. This time their side trips took the couple and their four children to Italy, where they visited Michelangelo’s DAVID. “I was standing there in awe at the perfection of that piece. It was very inspiring,” Smith says. “You look at something like that and it makes you want to rise to that level. Of course I knew deep down that I wouldn’t—but you can dream.”
Smith’s dream of an art career was temporarily detoured by his belief that making a living required a more practical path. He entered Arizona State University intending to major in business marketing. But during a drawing class he took as an elective during his first semester, the instructor asked him to step out into the hall. “You should really consider coming over to the fine art department,” she said. So the next semester, he did.
As it happened, the department’s direction at the time was strongly focused on abstract art. Other than a life-drawing class, there was little instruction in the fundamentals of drawing and painting. Smith admired such acclaimed American painters as Maynard Dixon, William Herbert Dunton, and Edgar Payne, and he was left feeling disappointed and lost. He was especially discouraged because, as he wandered through Scottsdale galleries, he saw magnificent examples of the kind of art he loved. He remembers thinking, “I’m missing out on something here.”
While still at Arizona State—where he remained to earn a degree in painting, thinking it might be useful at some point—Smith began seeking out on his own what he wasn’t being taught in school. He spent time in galleries and museums, and after the Scottsdale Artists’ School opened in 1983, he signed up for his first weeklong workshop, with Cowboy Artists of America member James Reynolds (1926-2010). He told his professors why he would be missing a week of class. Two of them were encouraging, while the other two informed him that it was an unexcused absence for which he would be docked a letter grade. So be it, Smith said. “I learned so much that week. It really opened my eyes to art education and what to look for.”
After that, the young artist continued to find landscape painters whose work was grounded in what he wanted to learn. Eventually he studied with such greats as Clyde Aspevig, Wayne Wolfe, Skip Whitcomb, and Michael J. Lynch, mostly through the Scottsdale Artists’ School. He also contacted Curt Walters, who was living in Sedona at the time, and requested a critique. The two painted together and became friends. In all these workshops and lessons, Smith was struck by one thing: While the artists worked in diverse styles, the fundamentals they taught were the same. And they were all adamant about one central piece of advice: “Go outside and paint from direct observation.”
Happily, outside was where Smith wanted to spend time anyway, especially in the desert near his home. In another fortunate turn of events, in 1990 the Scottsdale Artists’ School was looking for a local landscape painter to add to its roster and asked Smith to fill the role. He has served as an instructor at the school every year since then. He especially enjoys watching artists’ reactions the first time he takes them into the desert to paint. “They’re surprised it’s not a sand dune with one palm tree and a pool of water,” he says, laughing. “It’s lush.”
Smith’s own two-acre property reflects that wild lushness, although he planted every saguaro, prickly pear, ocotillo, agave, barrel cactus, and other indigenous species himself after developers had scraped virtually the entire lot bare to the dirt. (Thankfully they left a couple of very old mesquite trees.) The artist bought dozens of native plants salvaged by other area developers, as well as tons of rocks, to return the land to its arid yet luxuriant natural beauty. “It’s my 3-D artwork,” he says.
These days Smith spends about a third of his painting time on location, finishing some works on site and bringing reference materials back to his studio for others. PERALTA CLIFFS, a small plein-air piece, was created in one of his favorite locations, the Superstition Wilderness just east of Phoenix. He and an artist friend drove to a trailhead leading into the wilderness and hiked a short distance for this view of the cliffs. During the winter, even in mid-day, the shadows are long and the light is beautiful, he says. “The cliffs are rugged, which makes a harsh, wonderful contrast with the softness of the trees.”
The isolation of a particular scene, as much as its topography and vegetation, is what holds enormous appeal for Smith. He currently serves as president of Plein-Air Painters of America, and last fall he was thrilled to join 20 fellow members of the organization to paint in Montana’s Glacier National Park. Especially after living in Europe, where evidence of human habitation is ubiquitous, Smith has deep appreciation for North America’s vast and protected places where relatively few people go. “I love to get out into the raw, untouched landscape,” he says. “It’s where I feel at home.”
representation
Claggett/Rey Gallery, Vail, CO; Medicine Man Gallery, Tucson, AZ; Trailside Galleries, Jackson, WY; Del Monte Fine Art, Carmel, CA; Waterhouse Gallery, Santa Barbara, CA; Wood River Fine Arts, Ketchum, ID; Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; Simpson Gallagher Gallery, Cody, WY; www.mattsmithstudio.com.
This story was featured in the June 2019 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art June 2019 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.
MORE RESOURCES FOR ART COLLECTORS & ENTHUSIASTS
• Subscribe to Southwest Art magazine
• Learn how to paint & how to draw with downloads, books, videos & more from North Light Shop
• Sign up for your Southwest Art email newsletter & download a FREE ebook