Small Works | Tom Stanley & Paul Matheny

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Public Works Art Center

Two arts administrators share decades of artwork, from the 1990s to today, exploring Southern imagery, lived experience, and personal perspective.

"Small Works" by 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 currently at the Greenville County Museum of Art.

Selected collections include Nebraska Medical Center; Lander University; College of Charleston; Johnson Collection; Greenville County Museum of Art; Gibbes Museum of Art; Asheville Art Museum; South Carolina State Museum; Weatherspoon Art Museum; Ashley River Tower, Medical University of South Carolina; Davidson College; South Carolina Arts Commission; Carolinas Medical Center, Charlotte; and Affinity Health Center, Rock Hill, SC.

Paul Matheny | Artist Statement:

These paintings are contemplative, reflecting the culmination of experiences, and the result of paying close attention to the surroundings and southern visual culture evident throughout my familiar landscape. Each painting reflects recurring visual elements, emotions, rhythm and thoughts. The results have methodically evolved. They are visual concepts that keep their secrets silent. They allow the viewer the opportunity to experience them through their own personal experiences and witness what can be learned from the stories from trees and the search for truth.

Paul Matheny | Artist Bio:

I am an artist and curator working on Columbia, SC. Growing up in the Upstate of S.C. as a child, I first learned to paint by watching a local sign painter named Clifton Jordan at work in his sign shop behind my grandad’s Gulf Station. Much later, I graduated from Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C. with BFA and MAAA degrees. Through these experiences, my artwork often takes cues from southern roadside icons and hand painted signs, folklore, myths and legends. Recent paintings incorporate bright colors and bold symbols with an almost obsessive attention to detail within the negative spaces between a handwritten matrix of obscured words.

My paintings have been featured in solo exhibitions in the Carolinas and in group shows at the South Carolina State Museum; Winthrop University Galleries; the McKissick Museum at USC; the Sumter County Gallery of Art; the Museum of York County; the Light Factory Photo Arts Center in Charlotte, North Carolina; and Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, among others. My artwork is in numerous private collection as well as the collections of the Greenville County Museum of Art, the South Carolina State Museum, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the Winthrop University Galleries, and I am represented by Hampton III Gallery in Taylors, S.C.

This events runs from Mar 19, 2026, 10:00am to

May 16, 2026, 5:00pm Timezone: Eastern Time (US & Canada)