TOLEDO (AP) - You can't miss that smile - especially when the “Mona Lisa” image is 40 feet by 60 feet and staring at you through the windshield.

As you round a corner of U.S. 20, four miles east of the coastal Oregon town of Newport, there she is, with dark eyes and the smile often termed enigmatic.

She's been re-created on a 60-degree slope by an artist who spent eight years preparing the hillside for this masterpiece created from a stencil on a tarp and black, water-based pigment.

“I was always going to do the 'Mona Lisa,' I did it because the 'Mona Lisa' is the most recognized thing,” said the creator, Samuel Clemens, 48. He said his parents gave him the name, but he hasn't found that he's related to the writer better known as Mark Twain.

Clemens said he bought the former dairy farm eight years ago, and he has been working since then to rid the hillside of vegetation such as blackberry brambles and to let the grasses grow.

He said the “Mona Lisa' image took nearly 25 hours to trace and spray. He finished last weekend, and pronounced himself generally happy with the work.

“I was worried about the detail because the hill isn't smooth,” he told The Oregonian newspaper. “It isn't like a piece of paper. As it was, I lost a little smile at the corner of her mouth, and one of her eyes is in an undulation.”

Passers-by have taken note.

“Whenever someone makes the effort, you have to stop and appreciate it,” said Becky Stillwell of Albany, who brought her guests from Boston to view the work. “Otherwise, people stop doing interesting things.”

Clemens said he works construction to pay the bills for his other artwork, typically female nudes, although, he said, there's little call in rural Oregon for such work and not many willing to model.

Nevertheless, he's planning hillside artwork for 2007, a reclining nude - tastefully done, of course.

“Hopefully, I'll get it in under the wire and won't get arrested,” he said.