artist list

Floating #10 acrylic on panel 20 x 24

Artist Biography:

Tom Stanley is an artist/administrator, Chair of the Department of Fine Arts at Winthrop University, and Director of Winthrop University Galleries. Born in 1950 in Fort Hood, TX, Stanley grew up in Concord, NC, where he began his first explorations into art and music as early as early as 1960 with painted impressions of Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond’s Take Five. He received a B.A. in Art from Belmont Abbey/Sacred Heart College in 1972 and a M.A. in Applied Art History and a M.F.A. in Painting from the University of South Carolina in 1980.

Stanley’s work has been exhibited in numerous galleries nationally. Recently, his work has been exhibited at Barbara Archer Gallery in Atlanta, Homegrown at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem and Gallery twenty-four in Berlin. In 2005 his Floating series was exhibited at the South Carolina State Museum’s Triennial Exhibition and in 2004 at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. In 2002-03 he exhibited at La Galerie du Marché in Lausanne, Hodges Taylor Gallery in Charlotte, Musée de la Halle Saint Pierre in Paris and the Halsey Gallery in Charleston. In 2006 he had a solo exhibition in the Gallery at Carillon with his series entitled The Neighborhood. Stanley’s paintings have been published in New American Painting 28 and 46; The Carolinas Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow; Geneviève Roulin; and The Drama.

Tom Stanley

Rock Hill

Tom Stanley's work is represented at:

if Art Gallery and Hodges Taylor Gallery

About the Work:

Over the past 25 years, my work has been a journey of sorts. The points of departure have often been based in memory, music and the recognition of specific places. In many respects, My Sweet Herring is the culmination of a series entitled en route to hamlet (1994-1999), which referenced rural roadside attractions, the birthplace of John Coltrane, and the ruins of a turn-of-the-century textile mill. Many of the images from this series were collected during my research for a 1981 exhibition at the Columbia Museum of Art entitled Worth Keeping: Found Artists of the Carolinas. The Floating paintings are based on research of my grandfather, “young painter Tom Stanley,” from 1920 New Orleans. The Floating paintings use the same collected images that have become part of my visual vocabulary. The painting entitled Laps was initially based on a painting by Mt. Pleasant, S.C., resident Marion “Boot’ Hamilton (1919-1979). Hamilton’s painting City Within A City, included in the 1981 Worth Keeping exhibition and now in the collection of the South Carolina State Museum, depicts his impressions of Charleston Harbor. All of these paintings rely on my interest in the work of self-taught artists and the tools of mechanical drawing.