Pamela Smilow grew up surrounded by art. Her father was a modern furniture designer, sculptor and painter. She was raised in a unique cooperative community founded by Frank Lloyd Wright, where all the modern homes were integrated into their natural surroundings. New York City, with its myriad museums and cultural opportunities, was her backyard. From a very early age, she knew that she wanted to be an artist.
Although primarily self-taught in art, Pam did attend the University of Michigan (B.A., 1978) and spent one year studying ceramics at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Aix-en-Provence, France. She had her first one-woman show in Ann Arbor, Michigan when she was twenty-one and has continued to paint and exhibit ever since.
Her paintings are full of life, color and child-like primitivism. She draws on childhood experiences and memories for her vocabulary of symbols. These icons have remained consistent over the years: ladders, windows, vessels, flowers, houses, trees, clothing (based on paper doll cutouts). Her work grows out of abstract expressionism but has a variety of other influences.
Her interest in language brought her to Barcelona, Spain in 1980 and she spent the next five years living and painting there. This period added a new Mediterranean perspective to her work. Soon after returning to the United States in 1985, Pamela Smilow met her husband, Danish artist Gert Mathiesen. And thus began a collaboration that has lasted for all these years. Smilow continues to do her own paintings, but also works collaboratively with her husband on large-scale, site-specific works of art in a variety of media, including clay, plaster, printmaking, and painting.
Pamela Smilow’s work is part of many corporate and private collections throughout the United States and abroad.
