Bern Smith

Bernard (Bern) Smith was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1928. He attended the Winnipeg School of Fine Arts under Group of Seven painter L.L. Fitzgerald, and St. Paul's College at the University of Winnipeg, and in the nineteen-sixties moved with his three young children to Salmon Arm, British Columbia. There, he worked as a free-lance artist and between 1964 and 1977 illustrated over 900 Harlequin book covers. He became interested in watercolour painting after multiple visits to the Canadian Rockies and from exposure to the works of famous Canadian watercolourists W.J. Phillips and A.C. Leighton. Smith moved to Banff to live in 1987, where he devoted himself full-time to making art until his death in 2009.

In Banff, Bern Smith developed the habit of painting in the morning and spending the afternoon hiking and canoeing, in search of subject-matter for his art. The wild Rocky Mountain landscape was his primary inspiration, although he also worked with other subject-matter, including seascapes, prairie scenes and portraiture, including images of the First Nations people living in the Banff vicinity.

Bern Smith's paintings were characterized by their refined paint application and their accurate depiction of his subjects. He relished the solitary nature of his chosen vocation, and said “Painting is not a surface thing, it is deeper, emotional. It requires your soul.” His work was exhibited extensively and he is represented in many public and private collections, including those of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the Kamloops Municipal Gallery.