Gordon A. Smith - Biography

Biography

Gordon Smith's father William George Smith, was an amateur watercolourist. He took Gordon and his brother Donald on frequent visits to the National Gallery, London and to the Tate. They often walked the English countryside for inspiration in their work. The father critiqued the boys' paintings regularly. Great care was taken with their education. The brothers attended the Harrow County School for Boys where Gordon received four years of formal art training and several prizes for his art.

In 1933, Smith's parents separated. His mother Daisy Smith took the boys to live in Winnipeg, Canada. Gordon did not see his father again until he went to England as an intelligence officer during World War II.

Before Smith went overseas for war service he took a vacation in Vancouver. He met and befriended Marion Fleming, newly graduated from the University of British Columbia (UBC). In 1941 they were married and Marion worked as a social worker while Gordon was away in the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Regiment. In Sicily, in 1943, Smith was seriously wounded. His shattered leg would require a long recovery period. In 1944 he returned to Vancouver where the Vancouver Art Gallery had a solo show for the work he produced overseas. In 1953 Gordon and Marion Smith moved to the North Shore of Vancouver into their first house designed by renowned Modernist architect Arthur Erickson. The need for a larger studio space prompted them to move to a second new house in West Vancouver, commissioned of friend Erickson in 1966. After Marion's passing in 2009, Smith continues to live there alone.

Smith continues to be involved in the contemporary art scene. He has exhibitions regularly at the Equinox Gallery in Vancouver. He still gives a talk on special occasions like the opening of the West Vancouver Community Centre in 2009. He is always forward thinking about his new work and continues to encourage emerging artists. A quiet, modest, yet confident man, Smith has said when praised for his work "I am a hundred artists deep." The focus is taken off himself and onto his influences.