Shreveport Artist Ron Smith and His Art That Tells

“Drummers Smile”

Shreveport artist Ron Smith has stories to tell. Through his paintings of the rural Southern landscape, jazz, rhythm and blues musicians, civil rights activists, Black artists and writers, Smith pays tribute to his early life in North Louisiana’s cotton fields, to the African American experience and its contributions to American and world culture.

“That’s why I do different things,” he says. “They tell different stories.”

In so doing, Smith explores various approaches to his art, including his nostalgic rural landscapes with their warm-toned, weathered and often abandoned farmhouses and outbuildings that often appear as memories from another time.

“Lead Belly’s Jam”

“These structures represent a life that is still prevalent in the rural parts of America,” he says in a statement accompanying a painting of an old shotgun house at the end of a country dirt footpath. “Travel through the southern states, and a lot are still occupied. My hope is that we always remember the life of the families that started right here.”

Shotgun houses, he continues, “speak to what life was like for African Americans. There were those who were doing well, but those were very limited in numbers.”

Smith also dives deep into abstraction often with slightly recognizable suggestions as in his painting “Freedom in the Mist” with, as he says, “an illusion of people buried beneath the layers.” Here, he draws viewers deep into the imagery, color and composition.

In another series, Smith honors those “beacons of the Civil Rights Movement” and “others who paved the way in education, science and literature.” Here, he celebrates iconic figures such as Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Michael Jordan, Jackie Robinson, James Baldwin, Aretha Franklin, Louisiana’s Huddie Williams Ledbetter, known as Lead Belly, Shreveport-born jazz drummer Brian Blade and others who have contributed so much to American culture. Through his bold, vibrant and sweeping brushstrokes, one can almost sense the pulsating rhythms of their voices and their music rising from the canvas.

“Louisiana Blue”

Born in 1960 in Shreveport, Smith grew up on a plantation in Belcher, Louisiana, where his father worked as a sharecropper. “It was so unique,” Smith says. “As I look back, though we didn’t have much money, the community was so connected. Every family watched out for everyone. Mom and Dad may not have seen it, but the neighbors were always watching.” 

Like so many artists, Smith began creating art at an early age on the farm. In the second grade, his teacher, after lessons, permitted him to draw crop dusters, cotton pickers, tractors and the rural world he knew around him. Later, his school band director taught him how to play drums and kindled in him an interest in abstract art. After high school, Smith received a band scholarship to Mississippi Valley State University where he majored in graphic design. He still plays those drums at City Church in Shreveport.

As to his paintings and drawings, Smith says inspiration and art “is everywhere.”

“I get so many thoughts from so many places,” he says. “The smallest little thing can be inspirational. I could be at a car wash, shopping, listening to music, looking at an old door, viewing other artists on social media, visiting other cities or taking a trip back up to my hometown. Sometimes hearing someone’s story takes me to places of new exploration.”

While processing in his mind those “places of new exploration,” Smith often listens to music ranging from The Commodores and Aretha Franklin to contemporary Christian, jazz and classical. Sometimes silence is the best sound, however. “Silence takes me into self-reflection about life, goals or my walk with God,” he says. “The quiet also comes when I need to walk away from a painting to see what I may not have seen just minutes before.”

As he approaches a blank canvas, Smith says he seeks “to capture the essence of this human connection, weaving stories that resonate with others on their own unique journeys.”

Smith’s art career almost came to a tragic end in 1995 when he broke both wrists in a motorcycle accident. As he says, the accident “changed the trajectory of what my life was supposed to be.” Prior to the accident, Smith worked as a graphic designer during the day and at the local post office at night. He was about to quit his night job when the accident happened, leaving him unable to pick up a brush for the next 29-plus years.

Smith is back and painting. His work can be found in numerous public and private collections, including a local casino, airports, hotels and hospitals. He also has received a growing list of awards and honors, including a scheduled three-week artist residency this fall at the Château d’Orquevaux in the Haute-Marne region of France.

Fortunately, Smith’s return to art is going well as he continues “to capture the essence of this human connection.”

For more information, visit ronsmithartworks.com.

Exhibits

Cajun | Elemore Morgan Jr. Photographs from the Festival of American Folklife, 1976, through Dec. 19. Hilliard Art Museum, Lafayette. hilliardartmuseum.org

Central | Life as Opportunity – Clementine Hunter From the Brittain Family Collection. Art by one of Louisiana’s most important artists, through June 19. Alexandria Museum of Art. themuseum.org

NOLA | Sevres Magnifiqué: French Porcelain From the Collection of Thomas B. Lemann, through Jan. 3. New Orleans Museum of Art. noma.org

North | Home for the Holidays. Juried exhibit celebrating the heart of Christmas season through the work of regional artists, Dec. 3 through Jan. 3. R. W. Norton Art Gallery, Shreveport. rwnaf.org

River Parishes | Louisiana Couture: The Legacy of San Carlin. Exhibit celebrating Louisiana’s influential fashion house, through Jan 3. Louisiana Art & Science Museum, Baton Rouge. lasm.org