Gary Ernest Smith “Towards Home: The People, Places and culture of Eastern Oregon” A Special Retrospective Exhibit at Crossroads Carnegie Art Center

BAKER CITY – (Release from Crossroads Carnegie Art Center) Crossroads Carnegie Art Centeris delighted to announce the final, retrospective exhibit “Towards Home” by Gary Ernest Smith, a widely renowned Landscape/Figurative artist with home roots in Baker County. An opening reception will be held on Memorial Day Weekend of 2024 (planned), with hopes this will coalesce with the highly anticipated reopening of the National Historic Oregon Trail Interpretive Center at Flagstaff Hill. 

“Towards Home” will feature a series of original oil works, pencil sketches, and small source paintings of some of his iconic works from the last 6 decades of his professional career. “Towards Home” reflects Gary Ernest Smith’s personal memories and experiences of the region that have provided him with a profound appreciation for the hard-working personalities of Eastern Oregon, and the landscapes that allow them to maintain a lifestyle that is deeply seeded in the “Old West” traditions.  

“My roots always brought me back to Eastern Oregon. Although I tried to escape the challenges and hard work of a farm in my youth, the farm lifestyle is the very thing I began to explore in my work. That is; shadowed faced farm laborers, plowed fields, cowboys and cowgirls and farm settings. The images struck a chord within the art world; including galleries, museums, institutions, corporations, and private collectors across the country who began collecting my work.” – Gary Ernest Smith

Visitors will have the rare pleasure of viewing fine art that beautifully weaves subjects of proud and dignified figures, and the nuanced natural setting of Eastern Oregon. Gary Ernest Smith’s masterful ability to show such strong subjects with enough minimalist detail to leave room for each individual’s visual interpretation and see his work and translate it through their own memories and experiences, have cemented Gary Ernest Smith as one of the most coveted Western artists in the United States.  

“As I now approach 60 years as a professional artist, I am asked if I would ever like to see a retrospective show of my paintings. I have completed numerous one man and group show over the years in the USA and abroad and three very successful traveling exhibitions that went to museums across the United States.” – Gary Ernest Smith 

Gary Ernest Smith painted the iconic image for the poster of the opening of the National Oregon Trail Interpretive Center at Flagstaff Hill in 1991, which currently resides in the permanent collection of the Booth Museum in Cartersville, Georgia. It is fitting that Gary Ernest Smith and his work returns to Baker City with an exhibition on the year that the Interpretive Center hopes to reopen after a 2-year closure for major infrastructure improvements by the Bureau of Land Management. 

“To me it is an homage to the heart and soul of the place and people that has so influenced who I am and what my art has become.” – Gary Ernest Smith 

In 2023, Crossroads Carnegie Art Center, Inc. will celebrate its 60^th Anniversary as the oldest continuously operating Art Center east of the Cascades in Oregon. Housed in the iconic 1909 Carnegie Library Building in the Historic Baker City Downtown in the mountains of rural Eastern Oregon.  

Baker City, population 11,179, often called “Queen City of the Inland Empire”, was built on the largesse of the gold mining in the late 1800’s. Baker County, population 16,847, largest industries are agriculture and tourism.  In the last twenty years, a concerted investment has been made to attract the “creative professions” to Baker County to live and work in our affordable community has created a vibrant, arts scene.  

“Crossroads is thrilled and honored to be entrusted with Gary Ernest Smith’s last major show. It is important to the staff of Crossroads that we celebrate the remarkable journey of Gary Ernest Smith. Gary’s journey started as a child growing up in our rural community. He was nurtured to fulfill his talents by family, friends and educators who saw the promise. It was Gary’s hard work and dedication to his craft that helped him fulfill that talent by becoming one of the West’s premiere painters. He comes home to where it all began.” Ginger Savage, Executive Director Crossroads Carnegie Art Center. 

 Crossroads has begun planning for the exhibition, and will soon be releasing scheduling, events and opportunities for sponsorship and support of this exhibition. It is advised that art lovers begin to make their plans to travel to Baker County, Oregon from Memorial Day Weekend of 2024 to July 20^th, 2024, to see this remarkable show.  

For more information, contact: 

Ginger Savage, Executive Director 

Alyson Spiering, Community Art Director

---