Vernon Smith featured at Bend gallery

Vernon Smith may have shod more horses than any man alive. Now he paints them — along with portraits, nudes, landscapes and anything else that touches his fancy.

Smith’s work will be featured through the month of May at the Sagebrushers Art Gallery in Bend. An artist’s reception is scheduled for May 6, 5 to 7 p.m. at the gallery, located at 117 S.W. Roosevelt off Truman St. or Hill St. above the Old Mill District.

Retiring to Sisters in 1986 after a career as perhaps the best farrier on the West Coast, Smith, now 85, hung up his hammer and picked up a paint brush.

“I always was interested in it,” he said.

After his move to Sisters, he started pursuing that interest in art classes at Central Oregon Community College.

“I’m still taking classes there,” he said. “After 20 years I should have a doctorate or something, shouldn’t I?”

Smith paints in a rustic, wood-paneled studio adjacent to his ranch home in Cloverdale.

“This is where I spend most of my time,” he said. “Keeps me out of trouble. It’s a nice hobby.”

The studio walls are covered with his paintings and the occasional piece of memorabilia from his distinguished career, which included shoeing show horses at the Grand National Rodeo and Horse Show at the Cow Palace in San Francisco.

Smith learned to shoe horses on ranches in his native Nevada. He moved to the Bay Area in 1941 to go to college at the University of California, Berkeley. War intervened.

When the war was over, he returned to the Bay Area, intending to eventually return to school. But there was money to be made. The Bay Area was home to some very wealthy equestrian enthusiasts with classy gaited horses — and few men left around with the savvy to shoe them properly.

He became a full-time farrier and never looked back.

Smith always refers to his painting as a “hobby” but he works as diligently at it as he did shoeing horses.

He works in watercolor and, while western and equestrian subjects are dear to his heart, he tends to emphasize portraits.

“When you do a portrait and you get a good likeness, it’s very rewarding,” he said.

He estimates he works 40 hours a week on his paintings — but “say 30,” he said, laughing, acknowledging that he’s “still a workaholic.”