Cedric Smith’s artistic vision is to investigate the unseen. Then he opens eyes, educates, and celebrates the roles and contributions of Black people in American history. If his paintings make a viewer uncomfortable, he’s good with it.
Story by Lisa France | Photographs by Lynsey Weatherspoon
May 16, 2023
It’s not often that my stories start with a metaphor for the subject and their life’s work, but that’s the case with Cedric Smith.
When I went looking for him outside a gallery in Milledgeville, Georgia, he had to guide me even though it turned out he was literally right in front of me. The 52-year-old artist specializes in being a guide of sorts via his paintings, highlighting history that’s right there for all to see if only we know where to look. Smith and I were meeting at the Leland Gallery in Ennis Hall at Georgia College & State University, instead of his studio in Macon, because most of his work had been transported there for his “Horsepower” exhibit.
Aware of my horrible sense of direction, I gave myself extra time to make the almost 100-mile trek from Atlanta and followed the GPS directions explicitly. I arrived, parked — and still found myself lost.
Where was the gallery?
As I wove in and out of a stream of students leaving the university, I called Smith for help.
“Look in front of you.”
There he stood, tall and dignified, looking as much a model as an artist in his tan hat that reminded me of the fedoras my paternal Uncle Willie used to favor, a Ralph Lauren sweatshirt, glasses, relaxed jeans, and a jauntily knotted scarf at his throat.
After exchanging pleasantries, we entered the exhibit, where the first thing I noticed was a painting of Smith as a cowboy.
He explained that it was the first self-portrait he had ever done, and he fashioned himself to look like famed frontier lawman Bass Reeves, believed to be the first Black U.S. deputy marshal west of the Mississippi River.
I made a mental note to Google “Bass Reeves,” whom I had never heard of, which in an instant drives home why Smith has put together this collection of oil paintings showing African Americans as cowboys, jockeys, soldiers, and hunters.
“Just Beyond Those Mountains,” oil on canvas, 2022
He’s making visible the roles of Black people in the Wild West.
The self-professed lover of Clint Eastwood movies laughed while recalling that as a kid he watched the films and thought, “Oh, there are no Black people” without questioning why. As an adult, he said, he rewatched the movies and found himself thinking, “Wait a minute. I don’t see no Black.”
Research led Smith to discover that African Americans made up 25 percent of the cowboys in the Old West. He learned about Bill Pickett, a Black cowboy and superstar performer in Wild West shows in the early 1900s.
He also found that 13 of the 15 jockeys competing at the first Kentucky Derby in the late 19th century were Black.
And that Black soldiers injured in a Civil War battle in Saltville, Virginia, in October 1864 were abandoned by their leaders and massacred by Confederate soldiers.
Smith theorized that if he had been unaware of such facts, others might be as well. That motivated him to create art that would pay tribute to the Black men and women whose place in history has been overlooked and made invisible.
In Smith’s research, he discovered that most of the jockeys competing at the first Kentucky Derby were Black, and he has created works reflecting that forgotten history.
One of his oil paintings, titled “When the Smoke Clears,” shows a Black soldier bloodied and in full roar. Another, “Cowgirl (Blue Wild Rag),” features a Black woman in a pristine white cowgirl hat and a blue kerchief around her neck appearing to look off into the distance, her lips slightly parted.
The faces look both classic and modern at the same time, and he explains that he has pulled some of the faces that he paints from vintage mugshots.
“I did that purposely. What if that guy, instead of being an armed robber or whatever … had turned his life differently, and he was a well-known hunter or something?”
I asked about the jockeys he has rendered so majestically. Wasn’t he uneasy about the image, given the controversy surrounding the history of lawn jockeys, the diminutive statues of Black men — often designed with racist and exaggerated features — that have graced more than a few lawns in the South? They are abhorrent to some, and “lawn jockey” has morphed into a derogatory term for Black men.
Smith leaned into the question, shifting his posture as he explained that when it comes to his work, he has always tried to flip the narrative.
“A long time ago, I used to do these images of Blacks eating watermelon,” he said. “But even then, it was me just attacking that whole stereotype about the pickaninny. I’m like, we eat watermelon, right? Whites eat watermelon. So why are we ashamed to eat chicken and watermelon in front of people?”
Smith strives to upend the stereotype by showing the negative as something positive. Now he’s contemplating doing some sculptures to change the view of the lawn jockey.
“My grandmother used to live in a place called Thomaston, Georgia, and for the summer we would go there, and they used to have this jockey right downtown,” Smith said. “One day it would be all white. Another day it would be all black. It was like a thing, going back and forth with it being painted. As a kid, I didn’t get it.”
Rather than focus on the lawn jockey, which has become a bit of a trope, he envisions making magnificent busts of jockeys that would “look like chess pieces.”
Even if his work makes some people uncomfortable, Smith is good with it. At least they are learning.
“Jockey (Blue Cap),” oil on canvas, 2022
Born in Philadelphia and raised in Atlanta, Smith was barely in his teens when he found himself incarcerated after meeting up with a group of friends who had earlier committed a robbery.
Despite not being involved in the crime and his friends telling authorities he was not, Smith was sentenced to a year in a juvenile facility in Milledgeville. He believes the judge wanted to “set an example.”
While there, Smith realized he could take one of two paths: He could become embittered by the experience, or he could view it as a blessing, an event that could keep him from getting involved in the kind of criminal activity he was accused of and heading toward an early grave.
He also took stock of himself. Why was he there? Looking around, he saw in others what he’d been blind to in himself: He didn’t know how to be a man.
And why was that, he asked himself. “The only thing I keep thinking of is education,” Smith recalled. “We are not taught the contributions that we’ve given here. We are always taught we’re inferior. And that’s another reason why I do what I do, because I’m still learning myself.”
His drive to learn drew him to art. He was in his 20s, working as a barber, when a conversation with a customer changed his life.
“I overheard him tell someone ‘Meet me at my studio’ and I thought he was talking about a music studio.” Like many other young Black men in Atlanta in the ’90s, Smith aspired to make it in the music industry. He asked the man, What type of music do you do?
“He said, ‘I don’t do music. I’m a painter.’ And I’m like, ‘painter?’”
That man was William Tolliver, a Black artist who opened a gallery in Buckhead and was commissioned to create a piece — “Spirit of Georgia” — for the 1996 Olympic Games. He invited Smith to see his studio. It was the first time Smith glimpsed the life of a working artist. He was so blown away by Tolliver’s work — and the fact that he was self-taught — that the young barber made a decision on the spot.
“I went back to the barber shop and I said, ‘Yeah, I’m giving y’all two weeks” [notice], Smith said, smiling at the memory. “And they were like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I figured I could always come back to cutting hair.”
While some view Smith’s work as controversial, he says that he strives to upend stereotypes — such as Black people eating watermelon — by showing the negative as something positive.
The man who’d loved photography as a kid and was enlisted to do the backdrops for elementary school productions set about teaching himself how to paint. He said he was influenced more by the lives of artists — their freedom to create — than any particular artist.
He views his style as figurative realism with elements of romanticism, because while he is documenting history, he’s also often illustrating eras that are romanticized.
There’s irony in that, because Smith’s career, to an outsider like me, appears to be the type of romantic story that attracts filmmakers.
How else could you describe the “meet cute moment” of him early on in his career, schlepping his paintings into an Atlanta gallery where an employee (who turned out to be a wealthy patron of the arts) snapped up four pieces for $6,000?
One might think that would have given Smith a taste for the big money, but that’s not the case. Success to him looks different. It looks like selling enough paintings to buy a ranch, a truck to carry the tools of his trade, and enough room to dream and create.
Smith is not anti-money, but he has definite thoughts about conspicuous consumption — especially in the African American community. So much so that he’s begun a series of paintings addressing it.
“I did four paintings already on it. I would show a lady in the country picking peaches from a tree. But at the foot of the tree was an Hermès bag. So what I was saying was, what is really luxury?”
And while he is happy for Black artists who are getting widespread attention — along with big money — he’s not really interested in becoming one of them.
“It’s funny, because I’ve talked to some of my friends and we go back and forth about the whole art world in terms of the politics,” he muses. “I always tell them, I don’t care about that. I’m really not trying to be a part of that.”
Though Smith has shown in galleries around the world, he says he isn’t chasing fame or money. Instead, he strives to educate others, foster a love of art, and “show the faces people don’t know about” through his work.
Smith is a free spirit and, as with most free spirits, he shuns convention to embrace what works best for him.
That’s why he decided to move to Savannah in 2006 to change things up a bit. The city is, after all, home to the Telfair Museums, which include the South’s oldest public art museum, opened in 1886.
But after 14 years there, Smith said, he wasn’t getting the inspiration he needed; he began to look around for someplace else to settle.
A move to upstate New York fell through after several near misses in finding a space to rent; plus his mother none too gently let him know she was not happy with him potentially moving so far away from her.
In an effort to lay down new roots while still being close to his mom, Smith moved to Macon. His studio there, he says, has become his haven, where he creates, surrounded by the vinyl records he loves to play — artists like Otis Redding, Jackie Wilson, Gladys Knight, Etta James, and Public Enemy.
He also dreams there and imagines a world where more people who look like him can see themselves in his paintings and buy them.
“I heard another artist say it’s like we’re trying to show the self-worth of Blacks and their contributions to America. But maybe 85 percent or more are white who buy my work.”
During a recent show in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Smith said he spent some time observing the patrons, not revealing that he was the artist.
One man in particular caught Smith’s eye.
He was in awe, and he kept studying the paintings. “Finally, I walked over and talked to him, and he was like, ‘I just never … it just blew my mind.’ He said, ‘I’m a grown-ass man, but I’m seeing these images and it’s almost like I’m seeing me and I’m feeling proud about myself.’”
Smith can relate.
He’s shown his work across the world, from Galerie Zidoun-Bossuyt in Paris to Le Poisson Rouge in New York City, and has an exhibition scheduled at Aviation Community Cultural Center in Atlanta opening September 2023.
But on a sunny winter afternoon, he sits in a gallery just up the road from where he was once incarcerated and reflects on how far he has come and how far he has to go. He’s still learning his craft, he says, but prestige, financial gain, and fame are not his goals. To educate others, to foster a love of art — those are the things Smith is chasing.
The world knows the contributions of Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and a few others. Cedric Smith wants to make visible what he calls “the unsung heroes.”
“I just want to show the faces people don’t know about.”
Lisa France is a journalist whose career has spanned from hard news to being a pop culture reporter. She has held positions at the Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, and as an editor for St. John's University's magazine in Jamaica, New York. Her short stories have appeared in two anthologies, Baltimore Noir and A Hell of a Woman.
Lynsey Weatherspoon is a portrait and editorial photographer based in both Atlanta and Birmingham. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Time, and other publications. The fingerprint of heritage can be found on assignments and personal projects featuring Black Lives Matter, Gullah Geechee culture, unsung players in the Negro Baseball Leagues, and the last of a dying breed — a cobbler. Her work has been exhibited at The African American Museum in Philadelphia and Photoville NYC. She is an awardee of The Lit List, 2018. Her affiliations include Diversify Photo, Authority Collective, and Women Photograph.
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