pj white naples artist sculptor in studio
Photography by Anna Nguyen

The Naples Artist Who Thinks Like a Builder

Self-taught and construction-trained, PJ White makes tactile, labor-intensive pieces in his Naples studio.

by

Arts + Culture

Paul Joseph (PJ) White crouches amid resin dust, spray paint cans and pine scraps in his white-walled studio, maneuvering his body to reach the lower corners of an 8-foot mirror. Using a dropper, he applies thousands of acrylic spikes to a rigid frame he built from composite fibers and layered resins. The texture forms slowly, one point at a time. Creating the surface, reminiscent of bleached coral or planetary craters, is one pivotal step in his process, which can take hundreds of hours to complete. Some take nearly 1,000. 

The recently completed piece is part of his latest series, Foreign Matter, a collection of textured, functional artworks that reflect his industrial approach to contemporary art. The collection speaks to PJ’s penchant for creating collectible objects that exist somewhere between fine art and design. Instead of using molds or prestretched canvas, PJ draws on his background in construction, layering fiberglass, resin and wood much as he would when building a structure. “I drive the people nuts at Home Depot. I’ll pull every single piece of wood off the shelf, checking to see if it’s straight,” he says. 

PJ labors out of a workshop he designed behind his Naples home, complete with epoxy floors and gallery-white walls. Here, he cuts and recuts pine boards for handmade frames and wood ‘canvases,’ and mixes resins in small batches, testing them repeatedly. The emphasis leans less on symbolism than on process—how materials behave, how layers hold and how an object earns its permanence. “It’s about taking something ordinary and figuring out how to make it speak,” says PJ, who is working toward his contractor’s license alongside his art practice. Just outside the workspace, he designed a modernist pool, deck and fire pit as a retreat to reset when creativity hits a lull. 

About a year into his practice, PJ designed the 800-square-foot studio-gallery, which he calls The Laboratory. Mobile walls allow him to display finished work and clear space when projects overlap. “I’m jumping from piece to piece constantly, and I’ve got stuff everywhere,” he says. “I call it organized chaos.” When Naples designer and gallerist Judith Liegeois visited the space, she was drawn to the work’s tactile, material-driven quality and selected a piece for her gallery. The mixed-media Joker Face painting, featuring a clown-painted Marilyn Monroe and hundreds of hand-cut playing cards, sold for $30,000. The placement led to collaborations with Naples Fashion Week, Ferrari of Naples and Ultimate Garages. Aldo Castillo Gallery recently picked up his work as well.

PJ’s path to art was shaped as much by creativity as his entrepreneurial spirit. He developed two patents—one for apparel with integrated sunglass holders, another for a two-wheel snowboard training device—and started flipping houses before turning seriously to art. After time in Colorado, he moved to Naples in 2021 to be closer to his parents, Linda and Frank Meak, both active in local philanthropy. Growing up, PJ split his time between gallery visits with his mother, an avid collector, and job sites with his developer stepfather.

Those influences converged during a stalled house-flipping project in Naples. One of the workers knocked over a paint can, and PJ saw beauty in the way it pooled on the plastic-coated floor. In 2022, he began experimenting, testing different types of resin to capture the moment when paint hits the floor. PJ says his home looked like a scene from Dexter, with floors and furniture wrapped in plastic, tools strewn across the floor and paint splattered everywhere. The result was Controlled Release, a series of 3D sculptures depicting paint spilling from a can, suspended mid-flow.

The works became the foundation of his portfolio, which expanded into wall works with the Splatter Study collection, capturing paint spills from above. He leaned into pop culture imagery, creating works in line with the regional lifestyle. Luxury fashion logos, automotive insignia and iconic figures—Marilyn, Audrey Hepburn, Medusa, Pablo Escobar—became recurring subjects, rendered through the same labor-intensive process. In one work, Scrooge McDuck dives into a pool of gold coins, each one painted by hand across seven layers of epoxy, built up to create depth. The commercial success of works like this helped turn what began as an experiment into a viable career.

Intolerant of waste, he repurposes found objects for many projects. Cardboard tubes left over from one of his dad’s construction sites became a neon cactus, with paint drips that make the plant look like it’s melting in the desert sun. He crafted an organic sculptural seat, adapted from a discarded stool, which he wrapped in fiberglass, coated in resin and finished with acrylic dots for his Foreign Matter: White Collection series.

With more room to experiment in his ‘laboratory,’ PJ has begun stripping away imagery in favor of materiality. In Foreign Matter, PJ plays up his affinity for texture and performance with functional art pieces molded into biomorphic forms and covered in 3D spikes. The series puts his trial-and-error methods at the forefront, without a clear subject to distract from his unique applications of fibers, paint and resin. He intends for the pieces to serve as heirlooms for collectors. He’s currently working on a 7-foot light fixture for the collection. It’s built for longevity, with a dimmable dome and replaceable electrical components.

Five years into his artistic career, PJ’s studio remains equal parts workshop and testing ground. Materials are pushed and rebuilt, and processes are refined through repetition. For him, beauty isn’t applied at the surface; it’s constructed from the inside out.