Alyssa Schmidt

Alyssa Schmidt
Brookline, Vermont

STATEMENT

“Only Justice Can Stop A Curse” from In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens by Alice Walker (p. 342)

“In any case, the Earth is my home–though for centuries white people have tried to convince me I have no right to exist, except in the dirtiest corners of the globe.

So let me tell you: I intend to protect my home. Praying–not a curse, only the hope that my courage will not fail my love. But if by some miracle, and all our struggle, the Earth is spared, only justice to every living thing (and everything is alive) will save humankind.
And we are not saved yet.
Only justice can stop a curse.”

When I do my nature walks. My beauty walks around the yard, I see things happen right then.

The paintings have become more loose and simple with larger brushstrokes. They are still fairly small, and the finished painting is made in one sitting. You just had to be there. It is of that brief period. I have very painful nerve damage in my right elbow. Looking ahead, the paintings may need to be more loose to accommodate my elbow pain. I am still trying to work with it. How to pin together the insects, pollen and flowers for the insects, what they bring to us -> food, beauty, survival, climate rights and admiration for, women’s rights and power. This is what it’s about as I see things changing.

BIO

Alyssa Schmidt grew up in Medina, Ohio, and graduated with a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2003, where she majored in Painting. She was selected to attend the esteemed Yale/Norfolk summer painting program while still a student at CIA, and in 2004 she received a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts for Painting. She has had residency at the Vermont Studio Center, and the Outer Cape Artists-In-Residency Consortium in a dune shack in the National Seashore. Alyssa lives and works in Brookline.

ARTIST CONTACT

(802) 258-1108
[click to email]
alyssaschmidt.com

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