Randall Schmit


Randall Schmit is a contemporary American artist of Luxembourger and first-generation Dutch descent, working primarily in painting.
WWW RandallSchmitStudio.com

Biography

Visual artist Randall Schmit was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up along the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. After initial studies in architecture at Texas A&M University, Schmit began to paint, and was Studio Assistant to abstract colorist, Ray Parker (painter) during the late-seventies and early eighties in New York.
Schmit's calligraphic and buoyant abstractions first came to public attention in New York in the 1980s, where he exhibited extensively in the East Village, Manhattan. His first solo exhibition in New York was held in 1982 at on Prince Street in Soho; later exhibitions of the artist's work were held in such as José Freire's fiction/nonfiction, the Pyramid Club, and Virtual Garrison. Schmit's paintings were characterised as "loud, cartoonish" by critic Michael Brenson during this period.
Recent solo exhibitions have been in Hudson, New York at the David Bruner Gallery and at McDaris Fine Art, both on Warren Street; and a solo exhibition in Woodstock, NY, at the ''Woodstock Artists Association Museum on Tinker Street.
The artist has lived and worked in the Hudson Valley of New York since the early 2000s.

Influences

In addition to the obvious influences of Surrealism and the mature New York School found in the studio of Schmit's mentor, Ray Parker—a colleague of Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Michael Goldberg and others— and contemporary 1980s East Village Graffiti artists is also seen in Schmit's early work.
According to museum curator Lowery Stokes Sims, Schmit has been "fascinated with cartoons, which have been a starting point in his early work, and has incorporated comic imagery into his work" since at least the early 1980s.
Whether from his childhood in Louisiana, or the influence of Parker's musical interests, Schmit has long held an interest in jazz music, and was included in the important 1997 Smithsonian traveling exhibition, , alongside a quote from jazz composer, Miles Davis.
Drawing with graphite and acrylic paint over snipped images from art magazines, science fiction ephemera, movie and other books and magazines, Schmit has worked with collage since 1991. During a visit to Istanbul, Turkey in 2000, Schmit studied the historic mosaics installed within the ancient architecture there. He exhibited an important group of collage paintings at in Istanbul that year. These works are psychedelic in nature, with swirling comic and science fiction imagery woven into web-like trails and gestures of paint that bind disparate images together as one entity.

Education

Schmit entered Texas A&M University as a student of architecture. He soon migrated to the department of fine arts there, where he graduated with BFA and MFA degrees in Painting. He also studied painting during 1979-1981 at Empire State College at the State University of New York. The artist currently lives and works in New York and Columbia County, NY.

Honors and awards

Selected public collections

Books and catalogs

  • Morgan, Robert C.,, Woodstock Artists Assoc & Museum, Woodstock, NY, 2014.
  • Gillette, Frank,, E.M.Donahue Gallery, New York, NY, 1991.
  • Simms, Lowery Stokes,,, E.M.Donahue Gallery, New York, NY 1990

Additional references

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  • Randall Schmit at Galeri Apel, NYV, Istanbul, TURKEY, September 15, 2000.
  • Üstün Behçet,, Istanbul City Guide, September 2000.
  • Randall Schmit at Apel Galeri, HOME/ART, Vol. 59, September 2000, p. 20.
  • Brill, Joseph A., Hudson Artists Bring American Culture to the Middle of the World, Register-Star, Sunday, September 3, 2000, Front Page & Living Today, pp 1–2.
  • Myles, Eileen, Randall Schmit at E.M.Donahue", Art in America, Vol. 82, No 12, December, 1994, pp 104–105.
  • Yablonsky, Linda, Randall Schmit, ARTFORUM, Vol XXXIII, No 3, November 1994, p. 88.
  • Randall Schmit, The New Yorker, June 10, 1991, p. 17.
  • Heartney, Eleanor, Randall Schmit at E.M.Donahue, Art in America, December 1991,pp 117–118.
  • Randall Schmit: Absent Hymn Before the Flood, Mudfish 5: Contemporary Art and Poetry, Box Turtle Press, New York, NY 1990, p. 44.
  • Bogart, Derek, Gallery Scene: Magazine Street, OFF BEAT, Vol2, No 2, December, 1989.
  • Green, Roger, Randall Schmit, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, Arts & Entertainment Section, p. 2. Sunday, November 12, 1989, p.F-17.
  • Rivé, David, Randall Schmit: New Abstractions, The New Orleans Art Review, Vol VI, No4, May/June 1988, p. 4.
  • Green, Roger, Randall Schmit, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, Arts & Entertainment Section, Sunday, May 1, 1988, p. 2.
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  • Vetrocq, Marcia E., Randall Schmit at Tilden-Foley, Art in America, No 1, January, 1987, p. 145.
  • Wallace, Kent, Four Shows; Four Hits, Artspeak, Vol VIII, No21, July 1, 1987.
  • Behl, Catherine, Schmit: A Sense of Change, The New Orleans Art Review, Vol. 86-87, No 2, November/December 1986, pp 30–31.
  • Harlan, Calvin, Peach Blossoms, Mexicans, et al., The New Orleans Art Review, Vol III, No.23, March/April/May 1984.
  • Green, Roger, Randall Schmit, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans, Arts & Entertainment Section, Sunday, April 8, 1984, Section 3, p. 8.
  • Glade, Luba, Randall Schmit, GAMBIT, New Orleans, LA, April 14, 1984, p. 27.