BIO

RESIDENCE : Ketchum, Idaho

EDUCATION : Yale University, Art Students’ League, New York; Turley Forge School of Blacksmithing; additional studies at Denver University (painting), Colorado College (sculpture and printmaking); and special studies with Bruno Lucchesi (sculpture), Tom Buechner (painting) and Nahum Hersom (repousse).

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS (juried or invitational) and selected gallery shows

  • Denver Art Museum

  • Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

  • Sangre de Christo Fine Arts Center

  • Las Vegas Art Museum*

  • Aspen Institute –Exhibition for Ten Colorado Artists

  • Springfield Art Museum

  • “Mainstreams, USA” Marietta, Ohio

  • Ball State University

  • PBS Auctions (fund raising)

  • Audubon Society

  • The Nature Conservancy

  • Scottsdale Artists’ School, “Best and Brightest Show”

  • Audubon Artists, New York City exhibition, Salmagundi Club (2003)

  • Broschofsky Gallery, Ketchum, Idaho

  • Exhibition of North American Sporting Art, New York City

  • Elaine Horwitch Galleries, Scottsdale, Az.

  • Sportsman’s Edge, New York

  • Handsel Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

  • Sullivan-Bisenius, Denver

  • Various other gallery exhibitions in Colorado, Texas, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, New York, Washington (state).

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

  • Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center

  • Owen Gallery, Denver

  • Gryphon Gallery, Denver

  • Abercrombie and Fitch, New York (1977)

  • Sullivan-Bisenius, Denver (1985)

PUBLIC WORKS

  • Hess/Idaho Whitewater Memorial, Ketchum, Idaho

  • US Dept. of Interior: Life-size diorama of North American Indians (with Ken Bunn, Denver sculptor.)

  • ATP tour trophy (professional tennis tour)

  • Hobey Baker, NHL Hockey Hall of Fame

MISC: Artist-in-Residence, University of Southern Colorado; also taught at Rocky Mountain School of Art and Kent-Denver. Various newspaper and magazine articles, including Southwest Art and The Anvil’s Ring.

AWARD: Meritorious Award, Vietnam Memorial, Washington, D.C

Contact: Bruce Smith.  Ketchum, Idaho. Email: bruce@gravityironworks.com

ARTIST STATEMENT

The untouched canvas becomes a window into the imagination. What you see first in a landscape or portrait then transforms itself into possibilities, a push and pull between what you first see and what first inspired you to pick up a brush. Somewhere in between, sometimes closer to what you see objectively and sometimes closer to the emotion the object awakens, you begin to paint.

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

Aristotle c. 350 BC