Carnival, Carol Schmauder
When you visit Spokane, Washington artist Carol Schmauder’s Flootie page and her website here, you’ll discover that she categorizes her paintings into three series: Traditional Realism, Shattered Realities, and Abstract work. I personally find her artworks strongest when they fall between the cracks of those categories, combining elements of both abstraction and realism, as in Carnival (above) and Unorganized Religion (below).
Unorganized Religion, Carol Schmauder
Even the paintings that Carol categorizes as abstract, contain shattered elements of realism, as in the paintings titled Aligning the Plants, where we clearly see portions of buildings, shrubbery and grass.
Aligning the Planets, Carol Schmauder
While, Emerging From the Storm, may be completely abstract, the title suggests a satellite view of storm clouds swirling over land forms.
Emerging From the Storm, Carol Schmauder
Her Unorganzied Religion clearly combines church steeples with her watercolor swirls and elements of hard-edge divisions characteristic of her Shattered Realities series.
Unorganized Religion, Carol Schmauder
Even what Carol Schmauder considers traditional realism contain elements of pattern and abstraction, as in the very lovely work titled They Withstood the Test of Time, which the artist describes as a rock formation she encountered while on a picnic on Mount Spokane with her husband and friends.
They Withstood the Teat of Time, Carol Schmauder
And the most realistic of all the paintings presented here, Ivy Covered, based on a Vancouver Island restaurant–the shadows come to life as Schmauder paints them.
Ivy Covered, Carol Schmauder
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