Marc Schimsky

Biography

Born in Brooklyn, NY, and raised on Long Island, Marc Schimsky began painting and drawing at an early age. He learned how to make original hand-pulled prints in high school and in college, he focused on printmaking, painting and design. Marc's father was a factory worker who supported his son's interest in art by frequently taking him to art museums in Manhattan. Marc's mother was an aspiring writer. From 1969 to 1970, he studied at the University of Siena, Italy, and attended classes in fresco painting and sculpture at the Istituto Statale d’Arte di Duccio di Buoninsegna. During that time, he lived just outside Siena’s medieval walls beyond “San Domenico” in a residential area below Siena's famous “Fortezza Medicea”. Marc would often sketch the visitors to the fortezza. They became a source of inspiration for him during the late 1960s. His adventure in Italy in those early years reinforced his desire to devote his life to art.

Artist Statement

Since 2001, I have been painting exclusively in oils and acrylics. Friends and family are my main source of inspiration. Within the past 4 or 5 years, my work has become increasingly representational although not necessarily realistic. My paintings deal mainly with matters of movement, energy, rhythm, the ephemeral nature of life, the passage of time and a fascination with people. My subjects are explored through the use of vibrant color, loose yet authoritative brushwork and the illusion of motion. Borrowing qualities found in photography, I often blur parts of my subjects as if to freeze-frame them in the fleeting moment of a familiar experience. My intention is to reveal something mysterious or magical about their personalities. I have always been a great admirer of the works of Hans Hofmann, Max Beckmann, Willem deKooning, Francis Bacon, Manel Anoro and the San Francisco Bay Area painters, particularly David Park, Elmer Bischoff, Paul Wonner, James Weeks and Theophilus Brown. These artists have profoundly influenced my way of seeing the world.

Art Education

Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, MFA, 1976 S.U.C. Buffalo, NY, B.S., 1971 2001 - Fellowship, Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine - Drawing, Jewelry Design - Honour Mack & Sharon Portelance, instructors 2000 - Fellowship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago - Drawing, Painting - Matthew Girson, instructor 1984 - C.W.Post/L.I.U., Brookville, NY - Computer Art 1981 - SUNY, Stony Brook, Stone Lithography - Dan Welden, instructor

Awards

While working on my master’s degree at Pratt Institute in 1976, I was awarded an assistantship with Clare Romano-Ross, innovator of the collagraph process, at the Pratt Graphics Center in New York City. It was during this time, that I was first introduced to the possibilities of mixed media. Twenty years later, in 1996, I received the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s “Power of Art” Award which gave me the opportunity to briefly visit with the world-famous contemporary American “POP” artist, Robert Rauschenberg, at the National Gallery in Washington, DC. Inspired by Rauschenberg’s personality and by his canvasses on view in the Meyerhof Collection at the National Gallery, I became interested in experimenting with materials ordinarily thought to be incompatible with each other on the picture plane and began a series of works in mixed media that communicated issues of memory and abandonment. 2008 - Artist’s Magazine 25th Annual Competition - Finalist in Abstract/Experimental Category 2008 - B. J. Spoke Gallery, 27th Annual EXPO Competition, Huntington, New York Winner in Painting Category, juried by Marjorie Weinstein, Whitney Mus. of American Art 2007 - “Two Generations of Artists: A Father and Son Exhibition,” Orazio Salati Studio & Gallery, Binghamton, New York 2007 - Artist’s Magazine’s 24th Annual Art Competition - Finalist in the Portrait & Figure Category 2007 - Roberson Museum’s Regional Art Exhibition, Sears Harkness Gallery, Binghamton, NY. Awarded “Best-in-Show” by juror Philip Pearlstein, internationally-acclaimed realist. 2007 - Solo Exhibition, Butternut Gallery, Montrose, Pennsylvania 2006 - “Exhibition of Five Regional Artists,” Windsor Whip Works Gallery, Windsor, NY 2006 - “Driven to Abstraction,” Long Beach Arts Center, Long Beach, California 2005 - “Art in Human Motion,” Fredericksburg Center for the Creative Arts, Fredericksburg, VA. 2005 - “Light Effects,” Open Competition, Firehouse Gallery, Nassau Community College, Garden City, New York 2004 - 22nd Annual Natl. Small Works Exhibition, Schoharie County Arts Council, Cobleskill, NY 2004 - Solo Exhibition, New Paintings and Mixed Media Works, Orazio Salati Studio & Gallery, Binghamton, New York 2004 - “Merit Award,” International Juried Exhibition, New Jersey Center for the Visual Arts, Summit, New Jersey.