Dennis Smith

Bronze

48″x48″, oil, in possession of the artist. This salvation painting is very puzzling to me, and frankly I have not quite figured it out. It began as a treehouse on Maude’s ditch, across the fence from Dad’s orchard. Water flows down from the mountains unbridled to the head￾gates, where the watermaster tames it and portions it out. The Master is the source of life, and his spirit, like the water, permeates all life. He is pictured here in a “transcendent bubble” borrowed from medieval and Flemish altar paintings of the Last Judgment. I started to paint over the treehouse with the Last Judgment idea but after getting in the two angels I couldn’t cover the rest. Now the juxtaposition of treehouse and angel intrigues me, for the tree￾house is the child’s heavenly home from which he rules the world below. When I was a child I watched my father taking our water turn in the orchard, tending it carefully, diverting the precious fluid here and there with his shovel. I was so anxious to please him, my father. But he seemed so dis￾tant, so removed from my childhood world. In the painting the strong red ring around my father is like an impenetrable shell that keeps human beings from being real with one another. For years it seemed that my need for his Smith: Personal Myths 113 approval controlled my life. I subjugated my own thoughts and desires hoping to please him. In the painting my father kneels and reaches out to me, through the posturing membrane, to find me as I really am. And I reach up, no longer controlled by a need for approval, but confident of my own self-worth, accept￾ing of his love. The tall trees on both sides bind the starry heavens to the earth below. Apple trees bearing fruit stand on each side. On the left a ladder disappears into the womb-like opening of the tree. Trees on the right show remnants of a ladder that I am hesitant to totally remove and a geometric shape borrowed from a book on fruit trees. The shape is a spraying platform, popular in the early 1900s, from which tall trees were sprayed to protect them from infestation.

24″x30″, oil, in possession of the artist. This painting is in memory of a feeling – my introduction into the world of mystery and confusion – rather than a specific experience. Kristina’s log cabin (lower right) was the home of my infancy. The windows glow with warmth and light. I stand in front of the cabin like an intruder on a foreign planet, a pioneer stepping outside the walls of the fort, and am confronted by a labyrinth of trees. Grandpa’s world of the barnyard is half lost in the confusion beyond the stream. His house on the right edge offers a refuge from the puz￾zling world. But the swirling mass of poplars on the left intrigues me. I am drawn to the mystery, the web of trees that stitch heaven and earth together across the stream. The roots bind the earth while the high branches disappear into tumultuous clouds. Somewhere there I sense God, though I cannot see him. The cow and horse in an opening in the trees are central to the experi￾ence, as Adam’s naming of the animals manifested his relationship to the rest of God’s creation. The milkhouse nestled among the tree trunks offers nourish￾ment. The black juniper points upward from the birthing stead toward Grandpa’s place and is echoed by the upward thrust of the barn roof. The four circular orbs along the bottom are rows of an apple orchard, a cushioning support from the ground of God’s creation.

24″x24″, oil, in possession of the artist. A companion piece to “Labyrinth,” this painting has the brown dot of Kristina’s cabin at its center. The bridge across the stream introduces me to a second level of awareness – Grandpa’s world of the barnyard. Silver poplars frame the entrance to this new world, splaying their branches upward in cele￾bration of my “baptism” here. Having visited the animals and the fields, Grandpa, God-like, leads me toward his house, my next world of experience. In the background stands East Mountain, a hint of the world beyond still un￾known to my innocent and limited vision. The composition is lyrical, with pleasing, harmonious transitions. The colors – blues, greens, and browns in a mid-range gray blue scale – are muted and pastoral, suggesting softness.

24″ X 30″, oil, in possession of the artist. In Denmark my great-grandmother Kristina’s grandfather used to take her to school in a horse cart and pick her up after school. His wife and other mem￾bers of the family joined the Church and emigrated to Utah when Kristina was fourteen. Leaving her beloved grandfather behind was very difficult for Kristina. In this painting, Kristina’s grandfather watches her go into school (the Church, celestial kingdom?). The shadowy figure of a school marm (mis￾sionaries, God?) stands in the doorway to receive her. The school’s interior is a mystery, hidden from the grandfather; but the door is royal blue, suggest￾ing richness, and paradoxically, loyalty. Kristina literally fades into the path, melting out of the focus of her grandfather’s searching gaze. He longs to be with her but knows he cannot. He is outside the stone fence and cannot pass through. Beside him is a beautiful, eternal wheel, a personal cosmology which he cannot betray – his life. The earth turns; the sky progresses from night to dawn. The sea intimates the avenue of Kristina’s eventual departure and, sup￾porting the rising sun, suggests the expanse of the universe before which mortals stand.

40″x30″, oil, in possession of the artist. This painting began as a straightforward treehouse in the snow. But some￾thing was lacking. I added the kids to pull a human element into it. But then the trees became “woods,” like in Hansel and Gretei. The children wander through a maze, half playing, half lost. The older brother lies down in the snow. He is patterning, making angels in the snow. The other two see him through the trees and make their way toward him, aware of his example. While lying down they see the treehouse, something from their long forgotten past. Now it becomes a ladder leading out of the woods to the blue sky above. “

24″x30″, oil, owned by Dale Smith.

Dale is seventeen, the third of our six children. From birth he has had a mind of his own. Though we have tried to respect his individuality, conflicts have arisen, especially when I have tried to fashion him after my image of what a teenager should be. That never works – he instinctively knows that it is better to be himself than to please others. That is his greatest strength and the source of my conflict. He was frustrated recently when Veloy painted his room and we started “deciding for him” what to put on the walls. He said we were going to make it into a nice motel room. He brought me up short. I knew he was right. So I painted this portrait as a gift, an homage of respect, and told him he could do what he wanted with it. It is my view of him, a gesture of peace and love. He gave me permission to include it in this essay. The image comes from a photo taken when he was about six or seven years old. I have always been fascinated by the indescribable presence of that photo. Dale stands centerstage, looking straight at you. His coat seems to me a strong pyramid-like mantle, like those handed down from father to son, a passing on of responsibility and self-esteem. His gaze is assertive, you know he will not retreat. From his right shoulder, steps lead to the treehouse south of our home. Tree limbs bend down to caress him. The child-built treehouse is a very per￾sonal world, a private domain – no strangers allowed. “I’ll let in who I want. I’m in charge here.” On the left is another tree. Its limbs have been pruned, but thousands of small limbs sprout from the stumps, reaching indomitably upwar

36″ X 36″, oil, in possession of the artist.

Sunset on a winter day. A wild apple tree looms up from the ground toward the top of the composition, then falls back in branched arcs that caress the lower sky and umbrella the entire painting. The tree spans the whole of life : birth in the earth, then a surging upward through life into the heavens. The tree is wild – perfectly natural in an imperfect world. In the sunset of life its branches have begun the return to earth. The painting moves from right to left; upward, then back down. Two small figures trudge across the winter evening heading home beyond the brow of the hill – just out of sight. Cold shadows gather. Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom. My favorite hymn. The night is long and I am far from home. Lead thou me on. I do not ask to see the distant scene – one step enough for me. Night is coming on, but the colors of sunset contain the promise of dawn. The shriveled and frozen apples on the tree contain the seeds of spring. Resurrection springs eternal in the very core, the body, of the tree. In sacred stillness the soul recognizes both the frailty of life and its eternal essence.

30″ X 40″, oil, in possession of the artist.
The annual Alpine Day parade once featured a float of my brother Alan as Joseph Smith praying in a sacred grove of nailed-down, wilting apple branches. My sister Rayóla portrayed Mary who had a little lamb in the lead￾ing float, and in this painting I also drive Max’s go-cart near the front of the pack. The street becomes a stage across which the floats move from left to right. The church and trees serve as stage props supporting the players. The front row of cars rims the lower edge of the composition in a subtle arc, hold￾ing the action above. The Joseph Smith float is center stage. Ward members sit on benches on the church lawn. Semi-attentive to the familiar scene passing before them, they are unaware of the two pillars of light standing high above the makeshift sacred grove.