Evan Smith

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I didn’t set out to become an artist—it found me. As a child, I once bought a small set of oil pastels and used them until they were completely worn down. I didn’t have the means to replace them, but I never forgot the luminous color they could create. From that moment, color became my emotional language. I grew up surrounded by nature—our family vacations were spent exploring the great National Parks of the American West. Those landscapes became my quiet teachers, instilling a lifelong reverence for the natural world. Years later, I rediscovered that spark almost by accident, when my daughter encouraged me to draw for fun while on vacation. By my third attempt, something inside me had awakened. I began painting again—first with colored pencils, then with soft pastels, and finally returning to the oil pastels that first inspired me. Today, my art explores the meeting point of light, emotion, and landscape—where color becomes language and nature becomes experience. I paint not to capture the world, but to reveal how it feels to stand within it. In addition to my paintings, I am the author of five published books: Living Forms: From Desert Silence to Ocean Depths, Stephen T. Mather & Horace Albright: Guardians of the Parks, Abstract and Expressionist Works: Reflections in Color, Motion, and Meaning, Paintings and Reflections from the Redrock West, and Agile That Works: The Executive Playbook for Faster Delivery and Greater Market Impact. Each book reflects a different facet of my creative journey—from the stillness of nature to the dynamics of innovation and human purpose. For me, both art and writing are acts of gratitude—ways of acknowledging that the world is alive, aware, and filled with light.