Henry B. Eyring Artwork on Display

The current exhibit at the Spori Art Gallery at Brigham Young University – Idaho features work by a well-known name in our region, but he’s not known for being an artist.

The gallery is currently exhibiting 150 works of art by Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints leader Henry B. Eyring of the First Presidency of the Church. Friends and family convinced a reluctant President Eyring to allow his art to be displayed in conjunction with his son’s inauguration as university president. The art gallery curator says his watercolors, sketches and wood carvings are high quality.

“As the curator of an art gallery, I see many professional artists come through the gallery,” Kyoung Dabell said. “His quality of woodcarving and watercolor is top notch. His design sense is very sharp. He knows exactly which direction he wants his viewers’ eyes to go. All of his paintings have a beautiful tone within the painting that he harmonizes between skies and object in the foreground, and he’s excellent at that. His sketchbooks just blow my mind. I got to go through 37 small sketchbooks and every single page was filled with masterful sketches, and he’s an amazing draftsman.”

But you don’t have to be an art expert to appreciate this exhibit. people from young to old are enjoying it.

“Awesome! I like it very much,” Marsha Watkins said.

“It’s really cool. I didn’t even know President Eyring was an artist until I heard about this,” Kierstyn Miller said.

One thing you’ll notice when you come to this art gallery is how small some of these paintings are. There’s a good reason for that.

“He said that because of his very demanding church calling, he doesn’t have a lot of time and he doesn’t want to spend a lot of time on painting, so he chose to paint very small so he doesn’t have to spend too much time on it,” Dabell said.

The exhibit runs until October 20th. Admission is free.