Thiebaud (pronounced TEE-bo), 87, is one of the country's pre-eminent contemporary painters and is, like his art, comic and serious, philosophical and down-to-earth. At the opening of a retrospective exhibit of his work earlier this month at the Springville Museum of Art, Thiebaud's deceptive simplicity, wisdom and intensity were in ample evidence.

"Thank you for indulging an old teacher but really, we ought to just be circulating and looking at these," Thiebaud said to a packed audience as he gestured to the gallery walls.

Thiebaud, professor emeritus at the University of California Davis, wasn't referring to his own work - those paintings were hanging in adjacent rooms - but the work of other artists, many of them Utah-born.

"Don't look at me," he appeared to be saying. Don't look at me or at yourself, but look outside to find yourself.

Coastal influences: The modest Thiebaud is not a Utahn by birth, but the state likes to claim him because he spent a portion of his childhood on Thorley Ranch, north of St. George.

"He lived here only four or five years," said Springville director Vern Swanson. "But we consider him among Utah's finest artists."

Thiebaud's paintings are reflective of the world in which he spent most of his life. Raised in Long Beach, Calif., and now a resident of Sacramento, Thiebaud, who also spent time in New York in the 1960s amid avant garde artists like DeKooning and Kline, draws upon a personal palette of ordinary objects.

"He's the modernist that traditionalists love, and traditionalist that modernists love," said Swanson, referring to how Thiebaud bridges the gap between early-20th-century artists and pop artists like Warhol, with whom he has often been grouped.

Thiebaud's most well-known subject matter derives from sunlit bakeries and coolly lit New York cafeterias: In his middle period, he painted with precision the geometric loveliness of cupcakes and pies isolated on plates, and wedding cakes and other confections sitting atop refrigerated cases. He is also famous for vivid depictions of stand-alone gumball machines, iconic and deceptively quaint devices connoting a less mechanized place and time, and in whose shiny reflection, he says, "you might even be able to read your own fortune."

Other work shows palm-tree-lined California streets and perfect views of unmarred coastlines, as seen from above. Or California bathing beauties, hands on hips, staring at the viewer with the crispness and certainty of Thiebaud's edibles: cheesecake.

"I wish he had continued to live here," Swanson said. "Because I'll always wonder what he might have painted after a lifetime of looking at and living with our landscape."

Artist of the everyday: What is refreshing about Thiebaud is his unabashed use of quotidian material, not unlike the French artist Chardin. Thiebaud is not a "trained artist," he says, "but a sign painter." He never attended art school and made his living for many years as a graphic artist and as a "tweener" (one who draws the figures between animators' work) for Walt Disney.

"He is also tremendously humble about the fact that he also has two honorary doctoral degrees," says Campbell Gray, director of the Brigham Young Museum of Art and master of ceremonies at the Springville opening. When addressing a group, Thiebaud is ever the practical and spiritual teacher, attendant as much to day-to-day issues - such as how one moves enormous swaths of paints across canvas to make a surface appear smooth - to the grander concerns of the value of art to the human species.

"Art," he said, "is a 3,000-year anthology of human consciousness," which, when studied closely, yields "a fantastic kind of miracle."

Lamenting that the average viewer spends less than three seconds in front of any painting, Thiebaud encouraged the Springville audience to linger and ask what a particular piece has to tell, because art, a composite vision of individuals across time and space, "can tell us who we are, who we have been and what we can become."

A wise man with lemon meringue: In his later years, Thiebaud may be the closest we have to a shaman in the contemporary art world.

After his remarks, the gray-haired, bow-tied Thiebaud wandered among his paintings with a group of extended Utah relatives, leaning in close to adults and children alike.

When asked to name his favorite artist, Thiebaud responded without hesitation, "My granddaughter Colette," referring to a pigtailed 3-year-old nearby.

The reception, organized by Swanson and assistant museum director Natalie Petersen, was reflective of Thiebaud's style. The paintings popped on walls whose colors had been carefully chosen to make them do so.

"We had visited another museum where the paintings were hung entirely on white walls, and we felt that it was important to use color to complement Thiebaud's work, since his work is so very much about color," Peterson said.

Guests swarmed a table replete with earthly delights - edible cupcakes swirled on top like Thiebaud's paint strokes, as luscious to the tongue as Thiebaud confections are to the eye.

Some of the cupcakes were the color of lemon meringue. Perfect, Thiebaud said, because he and his wife first "dated over a lemon meringue pie."

"She made me one on our first date," he said. "And when you look at lemon meringue pie, if you put it in sunlight, it's possible to see it as a snowcapped mountain."

Something plain but referential, near and reverential - like Thiebaud himself. More than meets the glancing eye.

jcheckoway@sltrib.com

Hot dog! It's Thiebaud

* "WAYNE THIEBAUD: 70 YEARS OF PAINTING" is on exhibit at the Springville Museum of Art through July 27. The museum, at 126 E. 400 South, is open Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; and Sundays, 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Admission is free.

* FOR MORE INFORMATION, visit www.sma.nebo.edu or call 801-489-2727.