Chai Style Art: Artist, Therapist, Biker, Big Thinker

Whether it’s a fluttering bird, a portrait of Leonard Cohen, or poignant clowns, artist Karen Schwartz’s interpretation would most likely be super-sized. At her midtown “hip” King Plow or home studio, native New Yorker Schwartz internalized blockbuster art shows in the 70s at the Museum of Modern Art that shaped her 20th century sensibilities.

Dining room wood table fabricated from a single tree and metal chandelier shaped like tree branches and birds. Panel print by Vermont printmaker Sarah Amos.

She said, “I work large. I’m a very physical painter. I think of painting as a sport — often changing positions, climbing ladders, on chairs, shifting surfaces from wall to floor. I enjoy working outside because I can make even more of a mess, throwing and spraying paints and ink, and hosing down paintings to subtract content — all with abandon.”

Thornton Dial’s works on paper depict himself as a tiger.

Dr. Schwartz had just returned from a bike trip though Italy when she treated us to a tour of her studios and Druid Hills home.

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Jaffe: How did all this inspiration find you? 
Schwartz: I’m not formally trained, nor have I attended art school. I was highly exposed to art growing up in New York City. My mother had to drag us to museums; after a while that kind of exposure took root. I learned that I could draw what I see. I carried an SLR camera everywhere, especially when traveling. Then we replaced bulky cameras with iPhones. Influenced by photojournalism and the fine eyes of photographers like Cartier Bresson, Alfred Stieglitz, Walker Evans, and Berenice Abbott, I drew faces from photos I took with a telephoto lens of people on the street.

The Schwartz sunroom houses a love of plants focused on two sepia toned photos by Edward Curtis, photographer of American West.

Jaffe: So as an adult?
Schwartz: I’ve been fortunate to have encouraging mentors and artist friends who appreciated my particular expressive style in structured learning experiences, I worked through an artist atelier led by Michael David and drawing intensives run by the New York Studio School. I was graced with instruction to “look and see” but not “how to do.” I found my own way. My father once told a friend of mine that I’m most free and brave when painting. I think that’s true.

The sitting room has an original bird painting by Tom Swanston from his Sandhill Crane series. Above is a white molded chandelier.

Jaffe: What are some titles of your work?
Schwartz: “Spokes, 2022”; “Go Fly a Kite”; “Mother”; “The Universe is Expanding”; and “Phoenix of Sheepshead Bay” are some lively ones that reflect my penchant for being in motion and capturing it.

Jaffe: How does being a therapist dovetail into your art?
Schwartz: Being a psychoanalytic psychotherapist and an artist generates lots of cross pollination. I think of both as dialogic, relational and creative processes of making meaning or making sense, which is a distinctly human imperative. One can come to know what something is or means by drawing it. I come to know what I’m thinking, but not necessarily aware of thinking or feeling through painting. Drawing and painting are non-verbal ways of thinking, looking hard, and the impulse to make marks however possible.

Mixed media painting entitled “Mom’s Pillow,” fabricated using a disintegrating hand-painted throw pillow cover, oil paint and pastel by Schwartz.

Jaffe: What does this mean in lay terms?
Schwartz: The painting surface acquires a separate life of its own and talks back. In my mind, this is comparable to sitting with a patient and creating a conversational exchange. The clinical dialogue in its verbal and non-verbal dimensions is the canvas, on which a relational process dedicated to the agenda of the patient, can come into being, take form, and hold jointly constructed meanings.
 

Schwartz sees painting as a form of physicality as she climbs, moves things around and is shown here maximizing the floor space.

Jaffe: You have large space working studios.
Schwartz: I work on many pieces of different scales concurrently. I pull prints on paper off wet surfaces of large paintings to start drawings or smaller paintings on paper. I incorporate debris from the art making process, along with my own photographs and torn bits of drawings, into the large paintings.

Schwartz’s paintings side by side: (left) “Go Fly A Kite” and (right)“The Universe is Expanding.”

Jaffe: Your ideas come from where?
Schwartz: Inspiration comes from the work of artists in galleries or museum shows here or in New York City, my natural surroundings, the play of light on surfaces, my own photographs, and the human face and figure. I drew from live models until COVID when I lived part-time in a family beach cottage with my husband … in relative isolation. The result was a series of semi-abstract works on paper, my mother’s garden, seagulls and other sea birds. These were done outdoors through several seasons on the ground, as I had no studio.

Two of Schwartz’s large works: “Neither Fish Nor Fowl” and “Mask.”

Jaffe: Malcolm X, John Lewis, Leonard Cohen, Golda Meir have what in common? Describe your wide range of portrait subjects.
Schwartz: They are usually of family members, hired models or from photos in the public domain from newspapers or magazines of iconic or newsworthy figures, even “zoomed in” photos of faces I excerpt from TV or film. I choose whom to paint on aesthetic grounds, not because of who the person is. I’ve got to be grabbed by their face. Sometimes I paint famous people without knowing much about them, because I’ve been captivated by their expression or facial features. I come to learn about them through collecting photos, spending time with them in that way, and then coming to know them through looking and making marks to recreate my subjects on the painting surface.
  
Jaffe: Last word.
Schwartz: I’m really about free gestures of abstract expressionism, the distorted, multiple, simultaneous perspectives of Picasso, the flattened perspective of Matisse. I believe that without thinking it explicitly, I came to accept experimentation as critical to self-expression.

Schwartz is represented by Jennifer Balcos Gallery of Palm Beach, Fla., and Atlanta. Instagram: @kschwartz_art