5 Questions For Patricia Schappler

How has your upbringing or background influenced your current work or series? 

I work from images of Home, its complexity, origins, and cadences with the knowledge that time is linked tightly to space. In our lives time functions subjectively, fluid and continuous, beyond and before. Growing up Roman Catholic I was one of eleven siblings with over 40 aunts and uncles and hundreds of cousins. One of the younger siblings, I was often ill as a child with lymphedema from benign masses which worsened common sicknesses. I heard and saw much. My existence was small in the pecking order of siblings. In order to make sense of this world, I would settle into corners when I could, watching the day unwrap like the fairy tale and biblical narratives I was drawn to. I learned to listen and observe… to notice shifts in moods and body language, to draw from observation. Mom and her sisters were constantly making, embroidering, sewing, cooking, looking inwards and outwards with rosary beads in one hand and a sewing needle or ladle in the other, borrowing each other to watch over us, cousins and siblings alike, when one or another ventured across the seas. Drawing became a natural extension of living. 

Our world was organized through daily rituals, disciplined education, and weekly mass, but when our parents were out of home, the house became chaotic. Brawls and laughter erupted equally, spatulas flew, fires were started…I would head to my room when the noise became too much. The carpet underfoot and lace trim of quilts, steadying my thoughts as sunlight banded in rhythms across my room. The sensual experience of drawing let me experience home in a way I could look at long enough to understand. It was a prayer of sorts, a wish to recognize and understand the individuals in my everyday life, a love for the complexity of family and ritual, a search for balance. 

I was 19 the summer my dad was in a crash. We had lost so many loved aunts and uncles over my teen years that when he died; drawing became a lifeline, critical, something that sustained both the living and those who had passed, reflecting the dynamics of our existence. These beginnings trail into my work today. Most of my imagery begins with finding balance, a belief in family, and a desire to share open ended stories. Travel has become a means to cultures, bringing textures and feelings for place and belief systems towards my exploration of home. I find precision within the formal language of paint that brings the conviction, weight, and spirit to the figure that I feel. There is a burden and bounty to our presence on this earth, a constant question of why and towards what purpose; a search for meaning, a joy and weight that coexists and engages. I draw and paint as a dynamic record of being. 

How do you select the subjects or models you paint? 

I find subjects all around me within the figures and spaces of everyday life, throughout motherhood, among the students I’ve taught, around friendships and conflict, within the gardens I’ve grown and homes we’ve lived within. Inspiration grows from simple things, the feel of my mother’s kimono against my hand, memories of aunts laughing over poker, the sound of water drizzling during bath, the hawk circling above our roof, the moon sitting beyond the hill…It’s intuitive, embedded in my way of thinking and feeling our world. There’s a physicality to this world that must be met head on within the paint-all the desire and love, the worry and fear, the struggle and joy, all embedded inside the paint, the light, the space, the patterns and rhythms, the layers and balance- one thing and a million things connected. 

Which colors must you have in your palette before starting a painting? 

I have a traditional palette of titanium white, burnt umber, burnt sienna, ivory black, lemon and Indian yellow, viridian, ultramarine and cerulean, alizarin and cadmium red but want brilliant pink, turquoise and green available as well, they add life to the mud colors, calm the overactive colors, add balance. 

How has your style changed over time? 

I think style is particular to intuition, not changing so much as deepening. Hands, features, and body language have always been significant in the building of my imagery. Spanning years of work, my goal has been to remain open to material suggestion, alert to nuance, focused on what I see and feel through my senses as a shared experience between subject, viewer, and myself. As an instructor, I’ve worked with a broad range of paints, intaglio, pastel and mixed media approaching materials with curiosity, but I believe life come full circle and the animals and nature I loved as a child have been re-entering the picture plane, joining the figures, engaging story and meaning together. 

How do you relay emotion in your work? 

I think emotion is built, reactive in the first moments, understood in the following, and embedded over time through the larger, necessary rhythms. I aim to hold the tension between control and release on a surface, building a sensual space that is open. Mark making, through the building of texture and surface, the placement of shapes, the quality of light and balance of form, the language through the body and gaze…these are all abstract concepts built through layers that collect meaning, but I can’t say I know exactly where I’m going when I begin a painting. I have a feeling, I have insight into the composition, but I resolve through the making. Restraint creates enough power in composition to build ideas and meet the viewer. Titles suggest, and figures unite through form and content into palpable atmosphere. All these elements battle and befriend to create the whole over time. I want the painted or drawn image to wrap around you, a map of my sensations shared between us. I want you to linger, to feel the real within the work, perhaps inexplicably the way ideas take root in memory, and something feels forever, like it has arrived from before and is here now, and will always be.