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isual arts Capturing the Lyrical Spirit of the Coast by Ben D'Andrea Gordon Smith: sation, he reiterated one of his personal truths: "I'm 150 painters deep." One of the painters who emerges prominently from Smith's past is Jack Shadbolt. another giant of abstract painting in BC. In the late 1940s and early 1950s. Smith and Shadbolt taught at (he Vancouver School of Art. and Smith used to bring his paintings, wrapped in brown paper, into the school library to submit to Shadbolt's inspection. "Shadbolt has been a very strong influence on me because he's tough." Smith says. His sense of indebtedness to colleagues like Shadbolt comes as no surprise from a man who has never regarded teaching and painting as separate and conflicting careers. Before retiring in 1982. Smith taught art for over 35 years, first at the Vancouver School of Art and later at the Faculty of Education at the University of B C . "It's a privilege to teach." he says. "If you teach then you have to give something." Wounded while serving in the Sicilian campaign as an intelligence officer with the Princess Patricia's Light Infantry, Smith returned to Vancouver in 1944. Memories of his family's struggles during the v = ¡2 < 4 Painting is as vital to Gordon Smith as light and air. He's in his studio every day. including Sundays and holidays, and when he's not actually painting, he's thinking about it. studying it, slowly tracking down another of its inexhaustible secrets. Even with an apparently finished canvas, though, the process is far from over, for then follows doubt, as inevitable as rain. Smith submits all his work to near-tyrannical scrutiny, rejecting anything that hints at being contrived or facile. He may well destroy more canvasses than he saves. "If you have no doubts, then you're not a very good painter." Smith told me recently in the dining room of his West Vancouver home. "I question myself a lot." One of B C ' s most distinguished painters and a member of the Order of Canada. Smith prefers to cast himself in the role of an eager student determined to leam all he can: "I really slog it out." After more than five decades of exhibiting his work in major galleries across the country. Smith still frames his answers about his art in terms of what he has learned from other painters. Smith believes that his work reflects the influence of many different artists. During our conver- Depression were still fresh and his intention was to get his teacher's training. "At the time, you had to make a living." he says. "I felt that was the most important thing of all." Nevertheless, his training fit perfectly with his passion for art: " B y being a teacher. I had to learn all I could about art." Smith's first one-man show at the Vancouver Art Gallery was in 1944, an exhibition of about a dozen sketches and watercolours he completed while stationed overseas. In characteristic fashion, he plays down its significance. "We were stationed in the south of England and I made drawings of the beaches and landing craft and things like that. They were pretty flimsy things." Painting became a more serious pursuit when he started teaching at the art school. Several years later, in 1955. he won first prize in the First Canadian Biennial at the National Gallery, an award that brought him country-wide attention. One of his admirers was Lawren Harris. "I remember Lawren Harris came into the art school and said that he wanted to talk to me," recalls Smith. "He'd seen a painting of mine and he asked. Would I submit it for the Canadian Group of Painters?' That was the art group of the Group of