Phillip Smallwood's portraits on display at Carolina Galleries
Updated 10:48 a.m., February 9, 2010
Phillip Smallwood came to painting later in life. He was initially discouraged from studying art professionally and instead majored in biology with a minor in art. Upon completing college, Smallwood founded Woodtopia, Inc., an artisan furniture company. After many years away from his hometown, in 1993, Smallwood returned to New Jersey and took a watercolor painting class that introduced him to the medium he now works with on a daily basis.
Smallwood describes himself as a self-taught artist, his process evolving with every painting he makes. Smallwood paints what he calls, Lifescapes, portraits of African-Americans in the rural South or urban Northeast completing their day-to-day tasks that most people would ignore or overlook.
Phillip Smallwood
About his inspiration Smallwood said, "I want to bring my subjects into the world in a majestic and profound way, to put them on a pedestal and make them royalty in terms of the artistic content. Through my paintings, I ask the viewer to stop, engage and experience the individual lives portrayed with all their aspirations, dreams and desires and really see them as worthy of their observation."
Smallwood has been creating art with watercolors for over 20 years and is now working on an urban series of paintings where he follows one man through his daily life in the Bronx. Working from photographs and live models, Smallwood concentrates on line, figure, form and light in his paintings
Next Event: Opening art reception at Carolina Galleries, 106 Church St. Friday, 5-8 pm, lecture at 6:30 pm. Free.
Web site: www.psmallwood.com
Birth date and place: October 1957, New Brunswick, N.J.
Price of work: $2,500-$25,000.
Residence: New Milford, N.J., 17 years.
Family: Mother, Helen; father, Fredrick; brothers, Fredrick Jr., David; sisters, Gayle, Lisa.
Education: Bachelor of Science in finance and biology, minor in art, University of Miami.
Goals: Solo exhibition in major museum, cover of national art publication, representation by blue-chip dealer, feature article in The New York Times.
Influences: Andrew Wyeth, Thomas Eakins, Norman Rockwell, Fred Smallwood, Jr.
Price of work: $2,500-$25,000.
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