I’ve always thought the mark of a great artist is the longevity of their visual imprint. Since I entered Painting III: Material and Methods, Katie Schmalz ’25’s paintings have been unable to leave my mind. The course required us to make our own materials. Thus, the studio space was often littered with rotten ingredients, stains on the floor, and a putrid smell from the sink.
Katie’s space, in contrast, seemed to exist in singularity. She would cleanly place each tool in a row, with an equally neat painting on the shelf. Her paintings were complicated, but it looked as though she found ease in the process of creating them. Every element seemed carefully selected, considered, and applied.
However, Katie’s path to artmaking was not as neat. In fact, she was lottiered out of her first painting class and only considered an art major in her second year of college.
“I was so upset. But then I started my second semester and took Painting I with [Sara Lawrence Lightfoot Professor of Art Randall Exon]. I just loved that class and Randall. He said I should be an art major, and I was confused because I had never considered that. I was a bio major and maybe an ancient history double major, but never art. At the beginning of my fall semester sophomore year, Randall ran into me, and asked if I wanted to go to Ireland over the summer [for a painting intensive]. That kind of made me decide to be an art major. I was ready to become serious about this,” Katie shared.
Since Katie’s creative process seems so methodical, I was curious about what course impacted her development the most and why. She responded, Painting III: Materials and Methods with [former Visiting Professor of Art Dani Levine]. It made me think about the practice of being an artist. You’re not just illustrating images, you’re creating paintings which consist of all these pre-made materials. I feel each step is much more important to me now. Before, I was mainly interested in creating an appealing final product, and I didn’t care about how I got there. Now, I even consider how I can apply the media, and the origin of the painting itself.”
Painting III: Materials and Methods is an undeniably unique class. Professor Levine demonstrated how to make egg tempera, oil paint, ink, grounds, and countless other media from natural materials. Throughout the course, it was hard not to notice Katie’s distinctive style. Her paintings always appeared smooth, soft, and ethereal.
“I paint very thinly. I didn’t paint like that before, and I really enjoy it. When you paint so thinly, your ground and how you physically apply the paint matters a lot more. And so I’m applying, [but] I’m [also] wiping,” Katie explained.
Given her attention to the process, I was curious about what subjects Katie was painting for Contemporary Art Practice. The course prepares art majors for the Capstone and is designed to provide students an independent studio practice. She showed me some of her more recent projects, and I couldn’t help but notice a pattern. Every painting had ample liminal space. The skies were gray or white. The atmosphere was peaceful but isolated. I felt the stillness in her paintings, not unlike the silence of an Edward Hopper painting. I wondered how Katie navigates through her work. Why are her paintings so still?
She shared, “I spent the summer in New York City, and I hated it. I don’t enjoy big cities. I felt disconnected from the world, from myself. I needed a tree, some silence, and no one around me. I just needed to be in a different landscape than New York. In my paintings, I’m returning to nature and peace.”
I was curious where she received her reference photos. She explained that she took them herself during her time abroad, “I spent the summer in the most rural part of Ireland. There were also three other students and a Swarthmore graduate. Immediately after that, I went to Patagonia and was in one of the most rural parts of the entire world. I just love those places so much. I miss them a lot.”
I wanted to know more about her summer in Ireland, as Katie repeatedly mentioned how important the experience was to her artistic development. “We all painted under the direction of Randall and another artist from Philadelphia, Professor Jeff Reed. We went to different sites around the Arts Foundation, then we’d paint plein-air. They’d offer demos and feedback, and we’d have critiques. That was a two-week workshop, but we stayed for four more weeks as resident artists at the foundation. We had a studio and painted for four weeks every day, all day. It was amazing,” she said.
Katie continued, “I feel like, before I went, I didn’t really know what art was. I thought it was about making nice images, but in Ireland it was much more process-based. You had to make a whole painting when you were out in a field or when it was raining. I had to think through the process of making the painting. There was a lot of talk about how to manipulate landscapes and build a painting. You can still work from life, but you need to rearrange elements to build a good composition, as opposed to painting what’s directly in front of you. That completely changed how I thought about art, and now I view my process as building or making a painting, instead of simply capturing an image [that] already [exists].”
Suddenly, I had a realization. Katie’s paintings are accurate not because everything in her photos becomes represented in the final work. Rather, her artistic substitutions and interpretations create a realistic image. Emotion, atmosphere, and perspective combine to form an image that appears well lived in. I can imagine myself under the sky, on the Andrew Wyeth-esque fields she paints.
Katie recreates a memory of a landscape rather than reproducing a photograph of the scene, “I’ve been trying to paint overcast days, so things are very gray, which I think is in our memories a lot. It feels like an uneventful day. The sky is gray and it’s a little windy. It’s mid-afternoon, but kind of dark. That’s the vibe I’m going for. I want my direction to be representative of my experience.”
As the interview wrapped up, I asked Katie whether or not she plans to pursue art professionally. She responded, “For now, I don’t think I want it to be my career, but I’m never going to give up art. I want to live in a place where there are a lot of opportunities for some nice plein-air painting. There are also plein-air painting groups all over. Actually, I joined two plein-air painting groups in New York. I painted with them this summer and also painted every time I came home from work. I feel far more confident now in continuing art. I’m not fully closing that door in the future either.”
Whether or not Katie pursues a career in art, her art leaves a definitive imprint. It somehow contains the stillness of Wyeth or Hopper without feeling lonely. These images might have empty skies, but the viewer can find self-reflection in their emptiness. What I love most about her work, however, is that I can’t paint like Katie Schmalz. Nobody can. She paints in a web of memories, creating a world unique to only her.
