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The Sophisticated Innocence of Pam Smilow

Picasso once said, “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

Perhaps the salvation of Pam Smilow was the pivotal decision not to go to art school. She grew up in a creative and inspiring milieu of art & design in the famous Frank Lloyd Wright Usonia community in Pleasantville, New York. Her father was a renowned modern furniture designer and a trailblazing business man who marketed his own work. Her mother, a Holocaust survivor from whom Smilow believes she learned to carry empathy, fostered arts & crafts at home. Despite a childhood steeped in art, and having had the benefit of an excellent high school level art program, she chose to study French at the University of Michigan. While she did take a few art courses while in France, this fateful decision allowed her to maintain her own independent vision and creativity, unencumbered by the tastes and demands of others. She stayed free. She did not have to find her own voice. She always had it.

Her work sustains an element of playfulness, comparable to Paul Klee’s unencumbered vivaciousness. Smilow’s use of color and imagery transmit idyllic emotion, a form of tenderness. Each picture plane has just the right tone. The same way Miles Davis sought to find the tone center with his horn and changed jazz, Smilow’s expressiveness resonates like sound and color. Her two-dimensional picture planes radiate with brilliance into a multi-dimensional realm. Yet, each painting evokes subtlety, a form of natural innocence. Her paintings are filled with objects, shapes and imagery that, as she stated, reflects “Things in my own world, my vocabulary, things I notice. Sometimes a boat, or trees or other objects, some of which have been in my thematic since childhood.” She defines her art as “primitive, whimsical, filled with material elements.” The result is joyous and magical.

Smilow, who lives and works in Manhattan, is unconventional in both her creative approach and in business. She is a successful, self-supporting artist of considerable national and international stature, whose marketing activities are predominately not based on the gallery model. While she participates in gallery shows, her primary income is derived from direct sales to clients. She also does not apply for grants. Over decades she has built a successful business while thinking outside of standard norms. Her network of clients is international and nationwide, from New York to Chicago to California and Texas. She works with interior architects and designers and holds some very practical approaches to art, “I want my work to find the right home. I intend to fit a space, to pick and create environment.” This approach is usually that of an interior designer. That understanding of the “place and space” has helped her be successful, but her art is not mere decoration. Her commitment to her soul is uncompromising. Her paintings are transformative dreamscapes, abstract, visionary and powerfully expressive. Complicated, yet simple. Not made for commerce, but to lift sensibilities and emancipate the spirit. Smilow has a simple mission: “There is so much pain in the world, I want to bring joy.” People understand it. This sensible bridge between the artist and the buyer has allowed her to make a living as a fine artist in a time when that accomplishment is harder and harder to attain. She is a survivor, independent and strong.

Her late husband, the renowned Danish artist Gert Mathiesen, was her partner in life and work for twenty-five years. Mathiesen and Smilow were inseparable, sharing studio space and inspiring each other and marketing their art together. She recalled, “Gert was fearless, ambitious and unconventional. I was more restrained, free, but in a more quiet way. Our aesthetic was similar. Gert had a ‘The sky is the limit’ approach. He gave me confidence to trust in myself.” The creative partnership allowed each artist to follow their own direction. Their art was different stylistically, but similar in the absolute freedom and emancipation from external dictates.