© 2008 PJ Smalley, American Mom, oil on canvas (20” x 16”) For PJ Smalley, painting and drawing have always been a major part of life. Smalley has explored many different styles and approaches through the years, but always tries to use his art as a tool to communicate with the common man, invoking his “blue-collar, middle-class American upbringing.” Smalley's dusky-hued oil painting, American Mom, depicts a family matriarch wearing a mound of ice cream covering her head and hair, in what the artist refers to as a metaphor for his coping with his disability of trichotillomania (hair pulling). “Painting is meditative, and also keeps my hands busy,” says Smalley. “When I get an urge to pull, I transform that negative hand motion into the positive activity of art making. Painting and drawing with my hands keeps them busy, which ‘deactivates the mechanism' [of trichotillomania].” Currently enrolled in a BFA program in painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Smalley is the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards, including the Daniel Garber Prize for drawing and the Estell Prize for best figures in a landscape. |
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