Flat Out Under Pressure

Tom Stanley is a visual artist living in Rock Hill, South Carolina. After earning an MA in Applied Art History and an MFA in Painting from the University of South Carolina in 1980, he served on the faculties of Arkansas College (now Lyon College) in Batesville, Arkansas, and Barry University in Miami, Florida. In 1985 he returned to the Carolina’s to direct the Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury. In 1990 he became the first director of Rock Hill's Winthrop University Galleries. From 2007 to 2017 he served as chair of Winthrop’s Department of Fine Arts.

As an artist, Stanley typically works in series with limitations of size, color, and imagery. He uses recurring shapes such as triangles and figurative elements of houses and boats. Typical media are acrylic on canvas and on paper. Although using common graphic strategies like mechanical drawing, silhouette, and graffito, his primary process is about making something he has never seen before. The work is a conversation between hands and eyes. He draws with paint rather than paints with paint.

FOUP would not exist without the support, commitment, and fantastic organizational skills of MAC Board member and visual artist Janette W. Wesley, who has been very involved in the project since its inception in 2009.

The MAC Board of Directors and staff thank the following businesses for sponsoring the bins in 2020-2021: Slow Food Upstate, Duke Energy, Greenville Drive, Prisma, ReWa – Renewable Water Resources, Don and Zelma Waggoner Foundation, SynTerra, Inc. and Vicario Artisanal Liqueurs.

We also thank the following business entities for their support of this project: The Greenville Journal, Ever Green Recycling, and the City of Greenville.

This year’s exhibit sponsors are TD Bank and Clinkscales Chevrolet.