Mr Smith

Gregory Hampton Smith was born in 1941 in San Francisco to Margaret and Clifford Smith. In 1942 the Smiths moved to Fairbanks Alaska, where Mr. Smith supervised a gold-dredging operation at Livengood, north of Fairbanks. Fairbanks became Gregory’s childhood home.



During WWII, FDR shut down Mr. Smith’s gold operation, which never regained momentum at war’s end. In 1949, the Smiths relocated to Dallas, Texas, Mrs Smith’s childhood home, as they thought its climate would help Gregory’s asthma. But it became worse. Often confined to bed, Gregory continued making crayon drawings of such subjects as Mount Palomar Observatory, a raccoon washing its meal in a stream, a wolf howling at the moon. The only art-related exhibit he remembers from Dallas was at its Museum of Art - of models constructed from Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks.

In 1951, Mr. Smith secured employment at the Atomic Energy Commission, so the Smiths moved again to Arlington. Virginia, with easy access to Washington D.C. - with its great museums of art. Visiting them began Gregory’s art education and stimulated his enthusiasm for art as an occupation. By the time his fifth grade class went on a field trip to the National Gallery, he had already been there and picked out a favorite: a Bather by Renoir. The foggy atmosphere of Heaving Coals by Moonlight by J.M.W.Turner fascinated him, as it seemed to drift outward from the picture into the gallery. He made many drawings in his teen years of inside their house and yard. However his interests ranged widely, from biology, geology, physics, psychology and creative writing. A description of a visit to a live performance of Rhythm and Blues artists at the Howard Theater so interested Gregory’s writing teacher, she submitted it to the National Merit Scholarship, but it did not win. His winning of two art awards prompted his art teacher to suggest studying art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. He was accepted, and traveled to Pittsburgh in August of 1959. His academic career was quite unsteady, and he was threatened with dismissal from the department of Painting and Design.
However, in the fall of 1961, two important things happened: First, his painting teacher, Roger Anliker, assigned an “Absolute Realism” project in which students were expected to render in three stages; outline, value study and final full color, still lifes that he had set up around the studio. Smith had seen a Durer woodcut depicting an artist drawing with the aid of a gridded frame, so he made one out of mat board with black thread strung across its window - through which he viewed the still life for the outline drawing. When Anliker came by, Smith worried he would think he was cheating, but Anliker knew the woodcut and was impressed at a student showing ingenuity. Smith’s value study was regarded as the best in the class.

The second important stage of Smith’s development was meeting Joseph Fodor, a retired Hungarian physicist who became Smith’s mentor until he passed away in 1965. When Fodor saw Smith’s value study he said his work was to other student work like “heaven and earth.” Recognizing Smith’s talent for realism, he inspired Smith into seeing art as a cause to be championed. Fodor believed 20th century art had been damaged by a cultural illness which rejected the past and aspired to rebel against society and its traditional expectations of art and artists. He urged Smith to begin making copies after Michelangelo, as he had understood human anatomy more profoundly than even Leonardo. He also encouraged the study of art history, as a way of healing the rupture caused by Modernism.
He also encouraged Smith to protest American involvement in Vietnam - which determined Smith’s opinions until 2004, when a reading of Mona Charen’s Useful Idiots reversed his opinion. Under Fodor’s influence, Smith enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh’s graduate program in Art History. But with insufficient grades, he was dismissed from the department at the end of 1964. Depression about this among other things led Smith to consider suicide every day for the month between March 8 and April 8, 1965, during which he stopped visiting Mr. Fodor. That self-destructive urge faded away and he resumed visiting, but Fodor’s life ended in October of that year. While enrolled at Pitt, Smith had begun working at its Frick Fine Arts Library. He continued there until March of 1967, when he traveled to Grand Junction, Colorado to stay with his father and second wife, and seek employment. Failing to find a job there, he returned to Pittsburgh to work at the University Book Center, where he remained until March of 2003. He had continued copying, but in the late 60s, he began going out to do pastel landscapes from life. Such landscapes became his major occupation. But in 1970, he met his future wife, Carole Adams, who had just begun working at the Book Center. Her beauty became a major inspiration to him, and he made many drawings.
Carole Carole Carole

For Smith’s New York trip to find a dealer, read the autobiographical TRIAL RUN

Get in touch at gregapple1@gmail.com