(415) 497-3577
chrisschmitz@mac.com

EXHIBITIONS

Seven 2011 -- 142 Throckmorton Gallery, Mill Valley, CA, April 2011

Winter Open Studios    Industrial Center Building -- annually 1999 to 2010

Open Studios   Marin Arts Council --  annually May 1999 to 2010

Seven -- 142 Throckmorton Gallery, Mill Valley, CA, November 2006

To Never Forget: Faces of the Fallen -- Touring show: College of Marin, Syracuse University, The Claremont Colleges, Sonoma Museum of Art 2004-2006. Painted four portraits.

Art and Politics   O’Hanlon Center for the Arts, Mill Valley, CA 2005

Blossoms    
Artisans Gallery, Mill Valley, CA June 2002

Student Show   San Francisco City College, Fort Mason Campus  2000

ARTIST STATEMENT

Painting has enriched my life and given me great pleasure and internal peace. My formal study of art came later in my life, after marriage and my most creative projects, my three children. 

I am fortunate to be a part of a group of seven women who met in painting classes with the great Chester Arnold at College of Marin. We meet regularly to critique each other’s work and share creative ideas. I find that extremely helpful and a way to see my work through other eyes. In 2006 we had a group show in Mill Valley titled Seven. In the same space five years later we had a group show titled Seven 2011.

We also participated in Chester Arnold's Faces of the Fallen, a very moving exhibit of portraits of the first 1,100 American soldiers killed in Iraq. The photos had been published in the New York Times on the day that the American casualties in Iraq reached 1,000. Painting the faces of these young people whose lives were taken too early, most of them the ages of my own children, was extremely emotional.  I was contacted by and began communicating with the anti-war activist mother of one of “my” soldiers after she saw the exhibit and my painting.  She even left a copy of his dog tags on my painting in the gallery. He was her only child. She thanked me for “even getting the cleft in his chin.”

I appreciate having an artistic means of expression that gives pleasure to me and, hopefully, to others.
I am happy I can take some time out of my life, shut out the external noises, and play.

Christine Schmitz