{"id":56685,"date":"2021-02-06T00:11:41","date_gmt":"2021-02-06T06:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=56685"},"modified":"2021-03-04T10:09:24","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T16:09:24","slug":"doug-smith-finds-meaning-digging-through-layers-of-wax-and-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/doug-smith-finds-meaning-digging-through-layers-of-wax-and-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Doug Smith Finds Meaning Digging Through Layers of Wax and Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

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“Windows” encaustic, mixed media, 36 x 96 in. sold from the window of 15th Street Gallery, in the Sugar House neighborhood of Salt Lake City<\/p><\/div>\n

When we call for Doug Smith’s contact information, 15 th<\/sup> Street Gallery Director Lucy Heller tells us one of the artist’s encaustic works just sold \u201cfor $10,000, right out of the window.\u201d By the time we reach Smith, the same buyer has purchased an additional, smaller piece of his from the gallery.<\/h4>\n

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That he has reached someone through his work seems to move him; Smith says he found solace in art when he lost his youngest son, Garrett, 26, swiftly, freakishly \u2013 in a 2011 avalanche in Utah\u2019s backcountry.<\/h4>\n
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“Red Square III” encaustic, mixed media, 12×12 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cYou know, when you lose a kid, you\u2019re going to go through a couple of years of a lot of reflection,” Smith says. And it was during that period that he saw a notice for a workshop with noted Utah encaustic artist Jeff Juhlin. \u201cHe\u2019s a wonderful teacher,” Smith says of his teacher and friend. “Jeff has been generous. I deeply appreciate that and his instruction, here and in Maui, that have helped propel me to where I am now.\u201d<\/h4>\n

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\u201cI fell in love with the process … it\u2019s kind of an odd art form in that you are painting in wax, and it\u2019s white beeswax that you put a hardener in which is sap that drips out of trees in the West Indies and it\u2019s damar resin. You smash it up into a powder \u2013 you infuse it into the wax with heat \u2013 you strain it, you get out all the bark and insect wings, you get out all the crud, you get it down to a purified state \u2014 and that\u2019s where you start,\u201d he explains.<\/h4>\n
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\u201cAnd then you put pigment \u2014 in my studio I have 40 pots of molten wax in different colors. You are painting with hot wax and then you cut it out. You have about 30 seconds before it sets up. An average painting will have about eight to 20 layers. \u00a0And in between each layer you use a blowtorch. And you are painting with fire.\u201d Smith describes encaustic as being almost like archaeology: \u201cYou dig down.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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“Mod Redux I” encaustic, paper, mixed media, 12 x 72 in.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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“Mod Redux II,” encaustic, paper, mixed media, 12 x 72 in.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Born and reared in Ogden, where most of his family still resides, Smith says his background and education were in \u201cnormal stuff\u201d: design and space planning. He studied at the University of Utah and BYU, graduating in 1977 from Woodbury University in Los Angeles with a bachelor\u2019s in design and business.<\/h4>\n

He took that first workshop in encaustic about 10 years ago, after his son’s death. Then, six months later, his wife collapsed of a stroke, was left paralyzed and needed to be taken care of in a care center. “So, suddenly I\u2019m living alone, and it was kind of a hard time,\u201d he recalls.<\/h4>\n

\u201cAt 1 in the morning, when I couldn\u2019t sleep, I would go down into my studio \u2014 encaustic is a very demanding artform. You\u2019re doing the abstract right-brain design part of the painting but also the engineering part: how the thing is structurally going be layered . . . you might want transparent layers over there and opaque layers over here, and here you are putting horsehair or rust particles or lines or oil paint into etched art,\u201d says the artist.<\/h4>\n
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“Smudge Rouge,” encaustic, 36 x 48 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cSo, where you put your mark-making you have to engineer that so the painting will stay together, and you don\u2019t have layers breaking off.\u201d says Smith. \u201cI love the medium because you can carve it out, you can build up . . . Most of my work is mixed-media encaustic, meaning that I will layer paper in or horsehair or textiles or all kinds of things and you\u2019re layering wax over the top of that and then you are excavating \u2014 or etching \u2014 on top of that to get certain shapes, lines, and so on.\u201d<\/h4>\n

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Within a decade of his son\u2019s death, and a year after his wife died in 2015, another son, McKell, suffered a fatal stroke. Medical bills engulfed the family home. Then there was the loss of a business and of a good job. \u201cThat\u2019s been my trajectory,\u201d says Smith. \u201cPrior to COVID [art] was kind of an avocation for me. Interestingly, the past 11 months have afforded me time to seriously dig into this. I\u2019ve been producing a massive amount of work and the show 15 th<\/sup>\u00a0Street Gallery has up is the third in about three years. I had been teaching workshops in Park City up until COVID.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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“le Printemp,” encaustic, graphite, mixed media, 21.5 x 21.5 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

Doug Smith is determined that art is going to be a huge part of the post-COVID phase of his life. He wants to teach design and space planning and hopes to paint more in acrylic as well \u2014 he has a few acrylic works in the current show. \u00a0\u201cBut I prefer encaustic to acrylic, at least right now. It will probably be a year before I have enough [acrylic paintings] to do a show,\u201d he observes.<\/h4>\n

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Things are better these days, he says. He has a mid-century modern home (1962) that pleases him, and says he hopes not to go back into his old job creating events: \u201cI don\u2019t want to go back into a meeting every day post-COVID,\u201d he says.<\/h4>\n

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\u00a0\u201cI just put in seven years as a board member of The Road Home, and four years with the Rape Recovery Center,\u201d time he considers especially well-spent. \u201cI see that in this last phase of life I will be doing things that are soul-satisfying. Life is more meaningful now than it ever has been.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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Doug Smith stands in front of one of his large encaustic works.<\/p><\/div>\n

Douglas Smith and Andrew Skorut<\/em>, 15th Street Gallery<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through Feb. 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When we call for Doug Smith’s contact information, 15 th Street Gallery Director Lucy Heller tells us one of the artist’s encaustic works just sold \u201cfor $10,000, right out of the window.\u201d By the time we reach Smith, the same buyer has purchased an additional, smaller piece of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":56687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[979,3876],"class_list":["post-56685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-15th-street-gallery","tag-doug-smith"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Windows.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-08 13:07:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56685"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56718,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56685\/revisions\/56718"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}