We are thrilled to feature some absolutely incredible artwork in our lobby area from local artists in the Rochester area. We love to use this space a opportunity to connect our families to some of the amazing talent we have in our community!
Currently, we are honored to display the work of Deb Bicknell Schmidt, a local painter. Here’s a little more about Deb and her work.
Journey as an artist…..ME
I, as a child, was what was termed a “military brat.” My father was and still is an outdoorsman and a Veteran of the Vietnam War. We traveled quite a bit. Kindergarten was in Frankfurt, Germany. We settled in Watertown, New York as dad moved out of active duty and served as a civil service engineer. The barracks there, Camp Drum at the time, was perfect for tundra military training. As a child in grammar school, I drew many different cartoon versions of animals. These drawings reflected my love of animals in a whimsical harmonious nature while others were rooted in direct experiences with pets and nature. My family spent two summers raising mallard ducks. I created two unpublished drafts of children’s stories with full illustrations of the adventures of these ducks. PeeWee was the star of the first and Terry the second. Terry was the only hatching that summer and imprinted with me. I taught Terry how to fly by jumping off my boathouse on Canandaigua Lake. Terry was released into the wilderness in the fall. In 6th grade, I was lucky enough to have an art teacher who was very enthusiastic about my love of art and portrayal of animals with silly loving cartoon characters. Mr. McGregor introduced me to acrylic paints and small flat canvass boards. I was able to apply brilliant colors to my characters that year while Mr. McGregor painted beautiful cheerful children’s murals on the hospital walls of our local healthcare facility. My mother was always very encouraging.
Middle school marked the beginning of a tremendous shift. At first, Case Jr. High School opened new horizons through a ceramics class. Creating in the round was a whole new exciting world I had not explored. I loved it. Designing three dimensionally challenged my way of thinking and seeing. Everyone received clay pieces for Christmas. The following year brought me to a class with a very tall abrupt male art teacher. The environment was excessively stiff and stern. I whispered to a peer during a class and found myself immediately dismissed to the hallway where the instructor profusely screamed at me. I was flattened. I would never take art again. I stopped creating.
I was a math/science major in high school. Academics came easy to me. My grades were very high. I operated successfully in an analytical methodical manner that seemed to make everyone happy, especially my dad. In my sophomore year, a presentation of the vocational programs available tickled the old interest in art. I made an appointment with my guidance counselor to investigate the vocational art program. My guidance counselor was not impressed and clearly steered me in the “proper” direction by stating (not verbatim, but the “gist” or at least my takeaway), “You are too smart to do the art program. Only stupid people go in this direction. You need to stay in the math and sciences.” Well, that was clear enough. I never looked back or thought of exploring this direction again. I was going to get my master’s in business administration and make a whole bunch of money.
My journey after high school entailed studies at four different colleges, before I landed in a full art education program. I began in business at the Jefferson Community College. My major switched to accounting at the Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale campus, in Virginia. During this time, I began an internship at a local business where I met a student of the Corcoran School of Art in D.C. Her work reminded me of how important art was to me once. I applied to their open program at the Jackson Campus in Georgetown. After a semester, I was accepted for full study within the Corcoran School. I wanted this opportunity so very much, however, I walked away. As much as I wanted and needed this, I understood that a BFA would not provide me the necessary credentials for a financially secure career in life. I enrolled in the George Mason University’s education program. The school did not have an art education program, so I creatively took art classes and education classes hoping to combine the two fields. There were too many roadblocks to make art education work. I left George Mason and went back to the Northern Virginia Community College, Alexandria Campus, to study Illustration. It took me four years to earn an associate degree in commercial art. I worked for a year and a half as a commercial artist. I hated it. I went back to school yet again.
The fifth school, Nazareth College of Rochester, I received a BS with a focus on art education. The work I completed here was extremely intrinsic and reflective of my frustrations in life.
My bachelor’s portfolio was full of sadness, pain and internal suffering. My art served as a self-exploration. It was key in my journey to understand myself as an individual and an artist.
Upon graduation at Nazareth, I entered the classroom as an art educator. After four years of teaching, I had my son. The creative energy I experienced everyday from young artists and the innocent bright loving light my son brought into my life changed the course of my creative expression. Gestures of human beings of all ages fascinated me. The interactions of people with each other and the world inspired me. Life had a whole new connect. My work for many years thrived off this connect. My paintings were a way to celebrate moments, happenings, to tell stories about people. It was amazing to me how just the gesture of the subject could be such a thumbprint of that subject. I strove to capture the distinctive individual energy of my subjects and how the energy transpired to the human structure. Many of my paintings were studies from behind. Even though the face could not be seen, the individual was clearly distinguishable through gestural pose. This was just magical for me. Every piece told a story of an event, of an individual, of a connection, within the space of life.
I began my masters at the Rochester Institute of Technology and completed it at SUNY Oswego. There was much debate at both universities about realists. The realist was not given much credibility. The studies really challenged my conceptual development and perception of what makes “good” art. I struggled for a long time with feeling like I was a valid artist. I often wondered when one could define oneself as “artist.” It took me a long time to realize I had always been “artist.” Artist is an underlying dimension of who I am. It is not just about drawing or painting or sculpting. It is how I think, how I see, how I interpret, how I express, how I story tell, how I experience and live in the world.
Over the thirty-two years of teaching, I have created on a regular basis. I am an artist first, educator second. Vacations and summers have been the primary time for me to get lost in my work. My work generally parallels what is going on presently both internally and externally. There have been some real ups and downs. I have been through periods of time where I could not create at all. I had a spinal injury years ago that has ebbed and flowed with pain and flare ups until a major surgery. After the surgery, there was a period that I did not think I would ever be able to express myself legitimately as an artist ever again. Depression set in. I was nothing. I went in and out of this over the years. Paramount to one of the timeframes of physically being unable to create coincided with the aftermath of the unexpected death of my husband two weeks after he retired. My expression through art was my oxygen at this point. I needed this to survive. However, I could not do much. It was physically impossible to create due to extreme pain. I kicked and screamed inside of myself. Just holding a brush to a canvass was impossible without severe pain. I fought hard to create. I forced timed paintings in ten to twenty-minute intervals.
I painted in quick shapes to build a subject. The subjects reflected my state. Faces in pain.
I tore paper and pasted magazine pieces as my color pallet, as my paint.
I painted with only a palette knife quickly like icing a cake.
After many years of injection therapy, pain management and strength development, I am able to create for periods of time. I am so thankful.
My art directly reflects my passions, thoughts, and my struggles. My work is a fluid visual reflection of me. Presently, I work on animal and human portraiture for my love of the connection both individuals and fur babies bring into my life and into the lives of others. The series, “Places, Spaces and People,” expands conceptually beyond this to my interests in the layered dimensions of intrinsic and extrinsic experiences, pathways and windows in life.
To those of you interested in artistic expression, trust your gut. Listen to what your inner voice says and needs. Your voice was given to you for a reason. Trust it. Challenge yourself. Listen to people with a careful ear. Question what does not seem right for you. Know you have a voice. Find your voice. Align yourself with individuals that bring you positivity with your voice. Work hard. Do the tough stuff. Do not undermine your validity as a creative individual. Be open to challenge the growth of your thoughts and expression. Think out of the box.
I am an artist and retired art educator for over 30 years. The majority of my work is acrylic based. I have a love of figurative and spatial studies and am passionate about the things in life that “connect” each of us and our growth as human beings. Through my work, I aspire to capture the subject’s personality, gesture, spirit and energy. Art is my form of meditation.
The hanging series of eight related pieces has evolved from an investigation of the dimensional qualities of space and time as well as how we, as figures, move in and out of these layered spaces in life. Some pieces are concrete one-dimensional experiences of a moment or emotional event, while others reveal the complexities of the layered windows and spatial planes of life, past and present. Suggestive figurative shadows can be found throughout the different windows and spaces interacting and moving with one another.
Over the years, I have been commissioned to paint portraits of people and animals. I particularly enjoy portrait painting that captures the personality, the spirit and energy of the individual or animal. As an educator and mother, I have a tremendous love of children and a fascination with people. I find the energy of individuals who engage in life to be infectious. Animals have taught me to always remember to be present, to be in the moment, to love unconditionally and to be graciously open to love.
