December 2018 2-D Featured Artist Alicia Schmidt

 

Alicia Schmidt is known primarily as a minimalist abstract painter.  She works in deep saturations of color and creates sparsely designed compositions.

However, she has explored various subjects through the years.

The human figure has been the most frequently interpreted through different techniques, and incorporating simplicity of form.

She used the common paper bag in an extensive series of works: 3-dimensional assemblages, pastels accurately drawn and set in abstract backgrounds and expressionistically painted bags on chairs.  The bags eventually became monolithic forms as though welded together.

A series of paintings with chairs as subject featured dissected, distorted images of wooden, cushioned and upholstered chairs.

In 1976, while visiting the Albright-Know Gallery in Buffalo, NY, Schmidt’s greatest inspiration came from viewing the work of the Gallery’s Clyfford Still collection.  This inspired her understanding of minimal, spatial compositions. Her paintings would evolve from large monolithic shapes, to a line with a few small shapes, then to shaped canvases and, finally, to interpreting a subject through simple geometric and organic shapes.

Schmidt received her AA degree from Edison Community College in Fort Myers, FL in 1968; she attended Florida State University; received her BFA from Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, FL in 1972; and her MFA from the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico in 1973.

Her first exhibition opportunity was a solo showing in 1974 at Edison Community College. She has been exhibiting consistently since then in solo, group and over 100 juried competitions in regional, state and national venues.