Jon Schueler

Jon Schueler
Jon Schueler photograph
Born	Jon R. Schueler (1916-09-12)September 12, 1916 Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Died	August 5, 1992(1992-08-05) (aged 75) New York
Nationality	American
Known for	Painter
Movement	Abstract Expressionism

Jon Schueler (September 12, 1916 – August 5, 1992) was an American artist.

Biography

For a timeline, see Jon Schueler chronology

Schueler was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He first had the desire to become a writer, and after he acquired his Masters degree at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1940, he worked for a short time as a journalist. His writing skills helped him articulate his artistic sensibilities throughout his life.

The Second World War interrupted his writing, and he spent three years in the United States military. From 1941 to 1944 he trained in the Army and the Air Force; he became a navigator in the plexi-glass nose of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, guiding it on missions out of Molesworth, England, over France and Germany.

After the war, he moved to San Francisco, California and taught English. Schueler studied at the California School of Fine Arts where he met Clyfford Still, one of the staff. He also studied with Edward Corbett, David Park, Hassel Smith, and Richard Diebenkorn.

Excited by the Abstract Expressionism to which he was exposed, Schueler moved to New York City, New York in 1951, where Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko had studios. He soon became part of the New York School of artists and his first solo exhibition was in 1954, at the Stable Gallery.

In September 1957, Jon set up a studio in Mallaig Vaig, Scotland, just to the north of Mallaig. In November he went out on a fishing boat, The Margaret Ann, for the first time. That winter was especially difficult, due to personal issues and severe snowstorms.

This experience is also reflected in the following quote:

There now have been three massive experiences I have had with the Scottish sky. The first, in March 1958, when I had given up and, aching in my head and eyes and soul, I cycled from Mallaig Vaig to the white sands of Arisaig, where I watched the snow clouds moving toward me, implacable, from the sea. One passed over and through me, snow beating against my face. Then I turned to the south and saw the winter sun glowing in the snow cloud; strange image of light burning and dying through the shadows of a changing form. Though the sun was a winter sun, it translated itself in my mind to the most powerful and vibrant colors, reds, yellows, Indian yellows, or sometimes alizarin through blue.

From the 1960s onward, the colors in his paintings covered a narrower range, suggesting mood, rather than motion. Schueler's handling of his medium became more delicate and expressive in his paintings as he further developed his personal artistic aura, and moved beyond Abstract Expressionism.

After his first stay, in 1958 to 1959, Jon yearned to return to Mallaig, Scotland. But various circumstances only permitted a few visits until 1970, when he settled there for almost five years. Meanwhile, he had painted in New York, and Chester, Connecticut. Schueler exhibited in both solo and group shows, and taught as a visiting artist at both Yale University and the Maryland Institute of Fine and Applied Arts, (now the Maryland Institute College of Art).

On a rare visit to Mallaig in 1967, he experienced his second revelation of the Scottish sky, that became, like the snow storms, a major theme in his future repertoire, as shown in this quote:

The second experience was in 1967 when I was at sea with Jim Manson, the day of the gale. A mist hung like a curtain, to the sea, haunted by a subtle glow from the direction of Rhum. I pointed out the image to Jim, who said, "Yes, we call that a sun dog; it's the sign of the gale." This warning of the storm that was to drive us from the sea was the most delicate sign, impossible to draw, impossible to define, impossible to understand except in the most exquisitely senitive terms.

The summer of 1967 was also the first time Jon had begun to seriously use the watercolor medium. By this time also, Schueler had cast off the use of heavy impasto (impasto is a technique used in painting, where paint is laid on an area of the surface -or the entire canvas- very thickly, usually thickly enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible) that had characterized his earlier oil paintings. He was now using a much lighter hand.

Before 1970, Jon Schueler's times in Scotland had been in the autumn, winter, and early spring, with a brief visit in the high summer. Though he had experienced the very short winter days of the far north, he had yet to see the midnight sun of a June night. When he did, he had an intense revelation as expressed by this quote:

Last night I had one of the very important visual experiences of my life. It was late, 11:30, when I looked out the studio window and was struck by the somberness of what I was able to see...I went out...The vision was intensely real, yet it was the most powerful abstraction...this vision of death, or of Nature beyond life, or of Nature as she must exist beyond that fantasy of life that we imagine...This abstraction of the sea and the sky and Sleat – I was possessed by it, wanted to walk into it, to disappear into it. I was exhausted afterward. There was no color I could define: The greys were not grey, the silver was not silver, the blacks were not black. It was all light and all darkness. Believe me, I have seen eternity, and it is frightening and it is most beautiful, more beautiful and more powerful than any man or any woman or the works of either...

Horizontals indicating the line of the horizon had been a part of Schueler's compositions for some years. With this vision of the June night, Jon concentrated on developing this theme further, producing many paintings in which the picture surface 'vibrates' with bands of color that depend on the effects of light conditions belonging to the changing seasons on the Sound of Sleat. This somber, yet exhilarating vision set the stage for Jon's third theme for his sky repertoire, which he called upon for the next three decades.

Schueler died in New York City on August 5, 1992.

References

• Jon Schueler: The Sign of the Gale (galley exhibition program).

• Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey, (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4. p. 306–309

Further reading

• Nordland, Gerald, and Richard Ingleby. Jon Schueler: To the North. London: Merrel Publishers, 2002. ISBN 1-85894-177-6.

External links

• Jon Schueler Website
• Liverpool Street Gallery