Spring-2023
110 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G 2 0 2 3 Speaking of education, viewing the exquisite technique and craftsmanship in her work, one would naturally think this painter spent years studying at prestigious art schools. But no, she is an autodidact. “I got my GED and enrolled in some college art classes. All they wanted me to do was paintWillem de Kooning copies. I said,‘I’ve already done that.You’re just wasting my money.’” “It took me a long time to zero in on my own style, my own body of work, because I was locked into commercial work for a long time. But I was happy to be making a living with a paint brush in my hand.”That epiphany came a few years later, after she had transitioned to fine art, specifically abstract figurative painting. “I was working on a painting one day; had a bunch of paint all mixed up and ready to go,” Schuler recalls. “My then-infant son started cry- ing and I had to go tend to him. I had a kind of meltdown, was mad at the painting and mad at being interrupted. I took all the paint and start- ed scraping it all over the canvas with a palette knife. It was just a fleeting moment, a tantrum.” She returned the following day and saw a face on the canvas.“So, I mixed up some more paint and started working on it with the palette knife. I was having so much fun. Prior to that moment, painting had been a painstaking, ritualistic thing. Now, it was fun, and I was so into it.” As she worked, Schuler realized that she was unraveling a story from her past. “I’ve experienced some dark times, and some of that was coming through as I worked. I just let loose. It was bizarre. I was onto something here, something powerful, liberating…an indescribable feeling.” She looked at the finished painting and said, “This is good. That was the first time anyone would have heard that phrase come out of my mouth.” Schuler felt freed of a psychic burden that she didn’t know she was carrying. “When you see a therapist, just when you get to some- thing important your time is up and you have to wait until the next session.With these paintings I didn’t have to wait. I went gangbusters and did 39 more.” She kept that first one, and today it’s her iPhone wallpaper. When she was a homeless waif on the “Hollene,” 2022, oil on canvas, 71 x 79 in. That early, darker style has evolved into Schuler’s current light, airy and friendlier approach, but she still considers them highly personal parts of her personality. “Dolores,” 2013, solid bronze on granite base, 40 x 8 x 8 in.
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