Noah Schmitz
Brooklyn, NY
Website
www.noahschmitz.com
Social Media
Instagram
How would you describe your work?
I would describe my work as an amalgamation of different art-making approaches such as printmaking, tapestry, collage, and digital art combined with gestural mark-making techniques drawing from the Abstract Expressionists. My use of color is often vibrant and unapologetic, with highly-saturated areas of hot color combined with pale and neutral tones. My forms tend to be organic in shape, with serpentine or sinewy mark-making throughout.
There is a balance that I am searching for between creating hard-edged forms and mechanical patterning, with more painterly moves and chance operations where the paint drips and pools on the canvas.
What inspires you?
I am inspired by music, film, sculpture, and painting. My color palettes are often inspired by historical landscape paintings or a photograph that I took. I use photography to capture a momentary motif on a street corner like a bundle of power lines, a pile of detritus, or something seemingly insignificant that my brain finds compositionally intriguing. I then use the photograph to sketch out ideas and construct the foundation of a new work.
Can you speak about your process?
My process almost always begins as a series of sketches. In the first stage, I allow the pencil to just move around intuitively, trying to find interesting forms. Other times I'll use photographs I've taken as reference to find forms. Then I will redraw the same image, removing things I find less interesting and refining or embellishing the stronger shapes. Using colored pencil, I will start figuring out how I will implement color, while creating a mood board of different patterns. Once the patterns have been collaged in place, and the color feels right, I sketch directly onto the canvas and start laying down quick layers of acrylic paint. After many layers of masking out different shapes and patterns, I will finish the painting with oil to achieve a sufficient luminosity and depth of color.
How did you become interested in art?
I first became interested in drawing in high school. I would draw celebrity portraits and realized I had the ability to render realistically from photographs. During this time I developed a nuanced range and touch in regards to value, but had never really used color. Senior year, I created a self-portrait with baroque lighting, painted with Crayola paint. This was my first attempt at using color or painting and I was proud of the results. I had discovered that I loved painting and had a natural ability, but I had no idea what good painting was until I discovered art history in college, which truly opened my eyes to the endless possibilities of how I could approach painting.
Do you have any favorite artists, movies, books, or quotes?
My favorite abstract painters would be Charline Von Heyl, Albert Oehlen, Amy Sillman, and Joanne Greenbaum. Other artists I admire are Diebenkorn, Hesse, Guston, Vuillard, Matisse, and many others. There are too many favorite movies to pick any few, but I'd say my favorite directors are Paul Thomas Anderson, David Lynch, and David Fincher. In terms of literature, I love Aldous Huxley's books Doors of Perception, Heaven and Hell, and Brave New World. I find the poetry of Anne Sexton to be deeply and painfully moving. I find Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, and The Tipping Point to be both interesting and motivating.
