July 2020 Vol. 1, No.1
The Sophisticated Innocence of Pam Smilow

Red moons, White Tree
Mixed media on canvas
54” x 84"
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.

Yellow Spruce Series
Mixed media on canvas
54” x 80"

At people’s house
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.

Signs Series: Beige and Pink with Butterflies
Mixed media on canvas
54” x 84”

Tree of Life Series: Turquoise Green
Mixed media on paper
60” x 22”