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BAKER CITY — Crossroads Carnegie Art Center, 2020 Auburn Ave., will open a show featuring the work of Gary Ernest Smith on Friday, May 24.

Smith is coming to his hometown for his final show, and this retrospective is a culmination of Eastern Oregon-inspired work depicting Baker County, the fields, the ranches, the livestock, the mountains and the people.

This exhibit is on display until July 21.

Smith was raised on a ranch in Medical Springs and discovered his artistic talent at a young age. He attended Baker High School and went on to develop a career as a premier contemporary western artist.

“It is important to me to live and work with my family in a rural area,” Smith said. “Inspiration comes to me in times of quiet observation. A particular scene may not have had beauty to the casual observer, but if you stop and contemplate, you notice how the light passes between the wild growth in nature.”

He mostly uses a palette knife to create his work.

“It lets me build up the paint,” he said. “The palette knife allows me to paint wet into wet without muddying the canvas, while at the same time fostering a unity of color values, which solidifies the work.”

His work is inspired by the rural scenes he remembers so well.

“In the rural people I paint I attempt to portray something of the struggles and triumphs of those who work with a sometimes friendly, sometimes harsh environment,” he said. “Powerful symbols of rural American life continue to inspire me.”

Smith paints at his studio and home within the mountains of the Bull River in Highland, Utah.

During this show Crossroads is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.