Small Works | Tom Stanley & Paul Matheny

West Gallery | March 19th — May 16th | Opening Reception: March 19th from 5:30pm — 8:30pm Tom Stanley | Artist Statement: I have looked forward to this exhibition with Paul Matheny for a couple of reasons. For one, I had never exhibited with Paul although many of our interests continue to intertwine here and there. Exhibiting new and older work sounded like a possibility that might make sense. We met at Winthrop University in the early 1990s. Looking back and seeing our work over the years is a revelation. And I will leave it at that. My artwork is produced in series that share size, color, or imagery. Recurring shapes like triangles and visual symbols like houses and boats appear in the work. I use acrylic on canvas and paper and graphic stategies like mechanical drawing, silhouette and sgraffito. Working in series fits my desire to find visual and conceptual solutions from one group of paintings to the next. Beyond techniques, another common thread is my interest in how line, symmetry and asymmetry work in balance. My recent drawings/paintings are small. There is an intimate experience in their making. At this point in my making, that is more important than ever. Tom Stanley | Artist Bio: After earning an MA in Applied Art History and an MFA in Painting from the University of South Carolina in 1980, I served on the faculties of Lyon College in Batesville, AR, and Barry University in Miami, FL. In 1985 I became director of the Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC and five years later the director of Winthrop University Galleries in Rock Hill, SC. I served as chair of Fine Arts for 10 years before leaving Winthrop in 2017. I currently live in Durham, NC. Early in my career I was inspired by the work of self-taught artists who I had interviewed as a graduate student. This led to the exhibition Worth Keeping: Found Artists of the Carolinas, that opened at the Columbia Museum of Art in 1981, and Still Worth Keeping: Communities, Preservation and Self Taught Artists in collaboration with the South Carolina State Museum that opened there in 1997. My most recent curatorial project was True Likeness, a diverse exhibition of portraiture co-curated with Lia Newman, Director of Davidson College’s Van Every/Smith Galleries. True Likeness opened at Davidson in 2020. The project went on to travel to the Gregg Museum of Art and Design at NC State and university galleries in Fl, AL, Pa and MI. I continue to catalogue the drawings of self-taught artist Gene Merritt (1936-2015). Merritt’s 1998 one-person exhibition of methodically drawn and highly labelled portraits at the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne helped introduce Gene to wider audiences. Recently, the series Uncharted Water opened at Hampton III Gallery in 2024, and Moving Onward opened at the George Gallery in Charleston, SC in November 2024. Currently, I am honored to be included in the exhibition and publication At This Moment, Portraits of South Carolina Artist by Jerry Siegel c...