Charles A. Smith, among Yakima’s most revered and beloved visual artists, died at home Monday. He was 81.
Smith, whose work is in numerous personal and public collections throughout the Northwest, was an abstract expressionist of uncommon sophistication, said Dianne Elliott, a Seattle-based art consultant who facilitated purchases of Smith’s work and who has several of his pieces in her own collection.
“Everyone I introduced to him just loved his work,” she said.
Elliott discovered Smith’s work four years ago on a visit to Yakima with a Seattle gallery owner. They were staying with local art collector Laurie Kanyer, a longtime friend and supporter of Smith’s.
“We walked into Laurie’s house and there was this painting above the fireplace, and we both stopped and said, ‘Who is that?’” Elliott said. “His paintings had a sophisticated use of color, and they were just really engaging.”
Smith credited the development of his style to two influential teachers, Sarah Spurgeon, under whom he studied in the 1950s at what was Central Washington State College and is now Central Washington University, and famed abstract expressionist Richard Diebenkorn, under whom he studied at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1965.
“It was one full summer, and that was about it,” Smith said in a 2010 interview. “But it was real intense.”
By the time he studied with Diebenkorn, Smith was already an art teacher at Wapato High School, where his students included Leo Adams, considered among Yakima’s greatest contemporary artists.
Harry Thompson, a local artist and friend, remembers attending a party at which the two local arts greats, Smith and Adams, tried to outpraise each other.
“Here’s Leo Adams, a guy that’s done so much and been so successful,” Thompson said. “And here he is taking pains to make sure Charles knew how much he appreciated him.”
That was a common sentiment among local artists. Delma Tayer, a friend of Smith’s since the 1960s, felt privileged to be able to show her work alongside his on occasion.
“He was the best,” she said. “He wasn’t jealous or competitive, but he really believed in his work. Art was his life.”
And he lived that life with relentless positivity, keeping up to date on the latest arts and culture trends, Kanyer said. He loved Liz Taylor, but he also loved Adele and other contemporary singers and actors. It wasn’t uncommon for Kanyer to get an email or text from Smith espousing this or that new musician from Smith.
“He was 81 years old, and he was picking the trends — at 81,” she said.
Smith, whom friends affectionately called “Cha-Cha,” didn’t have time for darkness in his life, Kanyer said.
“He was filled with so much love that he loved everybody,” she said. “If you would talk about something serious, he was done with the conversation. He refused to look at anything that was dark. He was full of love and energy and beauty.”
Nobody ever knew how old Smith was, because he looked at least a decade younger, another longtime friend, Ron Tobia, said.
“He was a very independent person, who thought that age was just a number,” Tobia said.
That spirit helped him relate to his students during the three decades he spent teaching art at Wapato High School. He also taught at Yakima Valley Community College and conducted numerous workshops.
“I often run into people who tell me he was their teacher,” Larson Gallery Executive Director David Lynx said. “He was a teacher to many people who went on to be successful artists themselves.”
Cheryl Hahn, who preceded Lynx as Larson director and hosted a retrospective of Smith’s work at the gallery in 2010, wrote of Smith at the time, “I thank Charles for all I have learned from him. To watch him paint is to learn about the selective eye and the consummate artist at work. Some ask, ‘But what is it about?’ What it is about is fine art practiced by a master.”
