Dec. 30, 2023- Dec. 15, 2024
Bone Creek Museum of Agrarian Art received a major gift of art late in 2023. The Overland Gallery of Minneapolis gifted 24 paintings by American artist Gary Ernest Smith (1942- ).
Smith grew up in rural Oregon and worked with his father and grandfather in the fields. After serving in the military and earning a degree in fine art, Smith first started his career as a muralist, completing many large-scale projects for the Church of the Latter-day Saints. When, in 1980, he severed connections to
his mural commissions, Smith began to search for more personal expression in his art. “The foundation of all my painting is the rural experience, because that is who I am,” Smith will tell you.
The Fields paintings are so expansive that the viewer can immerse themselves in the feelings of being in that environment. His figurative images allow the viewer to remember or imagine the activity of working the land, tending the soil, nurturing the plants and livestock. Smith is unafraid to portray the most elemental of landscape forms or the most basic of agrarian tasks. His brave and compelling perspective has been a major force in Western Art at large. In this exhibition, visitors are encouraged to consider the visual elements—the tools in the artist’s toolkit—and the symbolic elements—the meaning behind the agrarian experience.