Governor's Gallery
Lynn Schwartz
Movement: Oklahoma Heritage To Horizons
June 25 thru August 17, 2007
Looking north from her Stillwater studio, Lynn Schwartz can gaze upon that line from which 60,000 settlers raced for land 118 years ago to begin Oklahoma. Movement throughout Oklahoma’s heritage and varied horizons is a distinguishing feature of her paintings.
Schwartz said that through her paintings, she hopes to move the viewer to visually experience our state’s rich heritage while envisioning unbounded horizons. “I often use oil paints to express diffused light and gradual value changes in form because the oils by their nature offer better control of edges which portray the two-dimensional image,” explained Schwartz.
Using broad brush strokes to represent the wind sweeping across her landscapes, she paints rapidly, capturing rhythmic qualities in her work. Schwartz paints with layered colors that illuminate and shade the undulating topography of places, faces and objects significant to our home state.
Her exhibit, Movement: Oklahoma Heritage to Horizons, is dedicated to her mother, Celesta Frost Rippeto, age 102, who was born in Greer County, Oklahoma Territory.
Born in Oklahoma City, Schwartz can remember how familiar a crayon felt in her hand and her wonder at making marks and shapes on paper. Her early memories include a love of nature and changing seasons. Through her Edgemere and Harding School days, she stained paper with iris petals and grass to make her first “landscape.”
She furthered her study of art and art history earning a Liberal Arts Degree from Pine Manor in Wellesley, Massachusetts and earned a degree in fine arts from the University of Oklahoma where she studied under Eugene Bavinger and John O’Neil. Through the years, her works have been shown in numerous gallery exhibits and accepted by art collectors in the realm of realism, impressionism and abstraction as well as non-objectivism. She is a signature member of the Kansas Water Color Society and the International Society of Acrylic Painters. Schwartz lives in Stillwater with her husband, Jim Cox, and son, Phillip Justin Schwartz. She is represented by The Howell Gallery in Oklahoma City.
“Oklahoma is about movement,” said Schwartz. “Its movement through history, its kinetic connection with the Plains Indians, and its tears flowing down many sun-cracked faces along the Trail of Tears. Movement catches my eye when I see dust devils, pumping oil wells, and scudding clouds gathering for a spring storm.” She believes that painting, in all senses of the word, is a moving process. Her goal is for the viewer to stop and see an Oklahoma on the move.
Sponsored by the Oklahoma Arts Council. For more information contact Scott Cowan at 405.521.2931 or scott@arts.ok.gov
The Governor's Gallery is located on the 2nd floor of the State Capitol outside the Blue Room and is open Monday through Friday from 8:30-5:00.
Past Governor's Gallery Exhibits
