Abstract Art Oil Paintings on Canvas by Cameron Schmitz
Cameron Schmitz is an abstract painter who has a background in landscape and figurative painting. Her education includes a Master’s of Fine Arts in Painting from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting & Drawing from the University of New Hampshire, and studies in Art and Art History at Studio Arts Centers International in Florence, Italy. Following a month-long artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2006, Schmitz made her way up to Vermont and resides just over the border of Brattleboro, in Bernardston, MA. ~ Cameron Schmitz
Schmitz’s work has been featured at Fitch burg Art Museum, Northern Arizona University Art Museum, Green Mountain College, Kyoto Seika University, Emory University, Metro Gallery in Burlington, VT and Brooklyn Expo Center and Rogue Space and in New York, NY. Notable recent press includes her work featured in Fresh Paint Magazine and being interviewed in a two‐part series on the popular podcast, Savvy Painter. She is represented, Carrie Coleman Fine Art in Norfolk, VA, Northern Daughters Gallery in Vergennes, VT, Michael Findlay Gallery in Palm Beach, FL, and The Drawing Room Art Gallery in Greenwich, CT. In addition to her art-‐making practice, Schmitz also teaches painting workshops at the River Gallery School of Art in Brattleboro, VT.
Painting is a metaphor for my perception of life, inspired by tender, emotional relationships, and rooted in notions of touch, love, and wonder that I experience as a woman, mother, and humble observer of the world.
I use mark-making to express the constantly moving, changing, and morphing of life and nature, leaving observers certain that they are witnessing merely a fleeting moment in time. I am fascinated by the imagery that emerges from the physical and emotive act of painting itself—dashes of paint, gestural strokes, and rhythmic painterly marks are representative of human touch, personal exchange, energy, and the shifting of time.
My pathway into abstraction stems from my background in both landscape and figurative painting—I have always been fascinated by gesture and the human aspects of nature, such as the way tree branches appear to reach out to each other, as if yearning to touch and hold hands. I have found that being a parent has heightened my senses and my desire to move beyond literal forms and clarified my artistic motivation to express joy, wonder, and a contented unknowing about life, which is messy and intense but always potent with exceptional beauty. It is this uncertainty I embrace while painting intuitively and abstractly because it allows me to relinquish control and give way for the painting to become a dialogue between me, the material, and its viewers.
