This week I am taking time to inventory my completed artworks for my series Constructed Realities. This mixed media series is a collection of poetry inspired works that incorporate both text and imagery with a variety of media such as soft pastel, oils, acrylics, and gouache. I am making these paintings as part of a portfolio in preparation for applying to graduate school in two years’ time. I’ve been stretched in ways I hadn’t thought possible working with a variety of media, and the challenge of translating abstract ideas into visual art. Here’s a snippet of my Statement of Purpose, which describes these works in more detail.
In my new works, I have incorporated mixed media and text, which is inspired by art journaling and mixed media art. For example, texts from selected poems or songs, such as the writings of Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, and T.S. Elliot, Dylan Thomas, and Thomas Hardy are included in my paintings to give viewers clues about the content of my work. Other influences include the song lyrics of Sting, and other musicians, psychological theories of human development, and current events. These texts are incorporated into my paintings to help the view draw connections between the emotional content in my art and the written word.
Jodie Schmidt, Time waits for no one, August 2020, mixed media: oil, acrylic, gouache, illustration board on masonite, 12 x 12 inches. Photo of Grim Reaper photo credit: Jbuzbee, 21 September 2008, Statue in the Cathedral of Trier, Germany, originally sourced on https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CathedralOfTrier_Skeleton.JPG. The photo has been re-mixed into a fine art image with the addition of pastel, gouache and other pictorial elements have been added to the composition such as the clock and figures. The original photo source is liscensed under wikimedia commoms.Jodie Schmidt, Dream of Time Travel, July 2020, mixed media: oil, soft pastel and gouache on illustration board, 12 x 12 inches.Jodie Schmidt, Childhood Memory Loss, June 2020, mixed media: Soft pastel and gouache on illustration board, 16 x 20 inches.Jodie Schmidt, Money is the Bait, August 2020, Mixed media: oil, acrylic, paint chips, canvas paper, and illustration board on masonite, 16 x 20 inches.
About a century ago (well I exaggerate a little); I was a college student studying art at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD. I had a brilliant and successful art teacher named Steve, who demonstrated how the practice of art-making and the hatching of new ideas could be brought to life, using a sketchbook. He taught me many useful things, such as how to keep an art sketchbook pasted with photos of artwork by artists I admired, and how to write an artist statement that reflected my unique artistic voice. Above all, his most important advice was that I should draw every day. At the time, that task seemed quite difficult to stick with. I was always an impatient artist as a student and I often rushed through the drawing stage to hurry up and get to the painting. I learned later that that was a mistake. Now that many years have passed since my graduation from McDaniel, I can truly see the wisdom of his advice.
In hindsight, I realize that he was so right about drawing every day. Now, I no longer rush artwork and I have learned to love drawing, whether it becomes a painting or not. In fact, I have embraced his advice of a daily drawing habit at various times in my life, and I have worked on several art challenges for both human portraiture and pet portraits on my Instagram account. One of these challenges is called 100 faces in 100 days, in which I drew a pre-selected photo of a celebrity using only pencil and paper. I did not add in a lot of detail or shading and I limited myself to 45 minutes a day. The process of a drawing challenge gave me many opportunities for both successful drawing and ones that I didn’t like, but it helped me to see my progress, and that the practice bore much fruit in terms of learning to take the time to really observe my photo references and record my observations on paper. You could say drawing is akin to yoga or meditation because you need to be completely mindful in order to capture the nuances prevalent in realistic drawing.
At present, I am struggling to carve out time for drawing. Sandwiched in between working, and preparing an art portfolio for graduate school applications, and other responsibilities, I am striving to make time at least 1x a week to draw. This time, I am focusing on making mixed media pastel and torn paper collage drawings. These take several days to complete so I only post about 1x a week on my Instagram account. But this working process works well for me, as the breaks in the
Stage 4: I began composing this piece by moving elements of the collage back and forth until I was happy with them. Then I had to cut them all out and paste them to the masonite. I created an entirely new sketch for the self-portrait and painted it in oils instead of acrylic so I could get more working time to blend and smooth the edges.
Stage 3: Next, I decided to paint my individual details and then add them to the substrate as collage pieces. I had to try several different adhesives to make these collage pieces stick from crazy glue to heavy acrylic gel, with varying degrees of success. The collage pieces were constructed on the illustration board, and are remnants of my first attempt at this painting. I used canvas paper for the parts I completely re-painted, such as the self-portrait profile figure.Stage 2: I started an entirely new painting on a new surface, using water-mixable oils on a masonite board as my support. Stage 1: This was my initial sketch, created with acrylic, colored pencil, and pastel on illustration board. However, I wasn’t happy with it because of the colors, and some drawing errors in the self-portrait. I also decided to go with a more realistic style in the portraits and paint in tone rather than crosshatching in the final piece.
action, give me additional time to evaluate the accuracy of my drawing proportions and the values in my shading. The most important take away I can say about drawing and getting good at it, is that it really helps your art practice to flourish. For instance, once you have the drawing and composition mastered, you can enjoy the next step more fully, whether its collage, painting or some other art form such as graphic design or sculpture. With an accurate drawing, you won’t have to worry about continuing to fix it and can fully embrace your next steps, and I am learning that it’s so much better to take the time and lay a good drawing as your foundation for your art.
A good case in point was my latest painting in progress, Money is the Bait, which started out unsatisfactorily because of several drawing errors in the initial portrait. I ended up starting from scratch in oils on a totally new surface, and it still isn’t finished. I hope to finish it by next week. Thanks for stopping by! If you want to follow my progress with the mixed media portraits, you can follow me on Instagram under my profile name, jsjschmidt.
I am so glad you stopped by to read my post today! While this blog post is a recycled one written several years ago, the artwork I am posting is completely new, and part of my new art portfolio. This week I am featuring the painting process of my latest work in progress, The Almighty Dollar. Its a mixed media collage which illustrates the poem, The World is Too Much with Us, written in 1807, by William Wordsworth. Although this poem was written in the 19th century, the theme of capitalism and greed is still relevant today. I think that’s what makes great art and poetry, something is written or painted in the past, which still resonates today! If you are working on an artwork or other creative project and feel stuck, I hope this post will help give you encouragement to carry on, or just start over again.
If you are a creative type or if you like to make things, you have probably encountered the moment when the finished product you imagined, does not live up to your expectations. Creative types such as musicians, composers, producers, dancers, writers, artists, photographers, cooks, and makers of all types, can probably tell you what it feels like to hit a wall with a project, and how it felt, and what they did to navigate that feeling of utter frustration. As an artist, I have experienced this frustration more times than I can count. Some paintings and drawings are simply learning projects and are difficult to salvage, while others can be fixed. I know it’s been said that you learn more from your mistakes than your successes, but when I get to a point in a painting or drawing and I realize that the painting or drawing doesn’t look right, it can be really frustrating. I start doubting myself, feel like giving up, or doing something that I am not good at, like cooking or cleaning because I know that I am not good at these things, so my expectations of success in these domains are much lower than for painting or drawing since I have no training in cookery or housekeeping. Since I know I am not a good cook, if it doesn’t turn out so well, it’s a waste of ingredients but I don’t feel as emotionally attached to the outcome as I would to a painting or drawing.
I recently read a forum question on the website, Wet Canvas.com, and the question of the day was,” When should I stop working on a painting? I was intrigued by the question, and wondered how other artists dealt with paintings that can “look like a dog’s breakfast.” I read about a variety of solutions suggested by artists who had hit the wall creatively. Some were familiar to me, like my tendency to put the painting away and stop looking at it for a few days, weeks, months, or even longer. Others were not as familiar such as putting the painting somewhere where you can see it, such as on an easel in a living room, and then taking time to look at it from time to time to diagnose the problem. Another favorite technique is to write a list of things I want to change in the painting, be it the drawing, colors, value, edges, etc. In my case, some of the artwork I have abandoned was started about two years ago, and I am just now starting to look at the sketches and Photoshop files.
This week I took some time to work some more on my acrylic painting, Waiting: Creative Block. I realized that there were several things bothering me about it. The colors and values, and the composition were some of the biggest glaring errors. I am realizing they there are many reasons why this painting series of poetry illustration works have been abandoned. One of which was being too busy with other things to give the series the proper amount of time it requires to get things right, such as the composition and the drawing. Since I dropped out of the Social Work program at Frederick Community College, I do have more time to work on paintings. And since I have deliberately looked at my schedule e and started marking studio days on the calendar, I have more “intentional “time.
This week I am going in a slightly different direction than last week, but I haven’t given up on my poetry inspired work. I have started a new series of portraits based on the lives of writers, poets, and others to try something a little new but somewhat related to the poetry series. Next to working on artwork, my other favorite hobby is to read biographies of people I admire, such as Emily Dickinson, Julia Child, and others. So I thought,
At home in Nature, Mixed Media, 2020, Jodie Schmidt. In this stage, I continued to add more details and some limited color to Emily Dickinson’s face, the songbird, and the echinacea flowers. The fire of creativity, Mixed media, 2020, Jodie Schmidt. On further review, I decided that the shadows had gotten too dark and overpowering. So I toned them down with some soft pastels to modify the tones. I struggled to figure out how best to represent this abstract concept of creativity and finally decided on using fire. I tried to combine a variety of sources, with some stock photos of greek mythology. This piece will be much larger when I am done since I plan to make it a triptych.
what not combine my love of art and reading biographies?
Like the poetry series, the work focuses on the portrait and symbolic imagery to help describe the content of the piece. Similarly, I am working in a mixed media style with these portraits, beginning with a pencil sketch and then creating a tonal under painting in gouache. Finally, I finish it off with a more detailed limited palette with soft pastels on Illustration board. My goal is to make at least 10 poetry series portraits and 10 biographical portraits in preparation for applying to graduate school to get my master’s in fine art.
Today I wanted to show you my work process so far with these new portraits. The first one is a sketch of Emily Dickinson. Much has been illustrated regarding her and her poetry, but I wanted to show a different aspect of her personality and that was that she had a passion for plants and nature, even keeping a personal collection of plants in her home and a garden she tended frequently. It should also be noted that many of her poems are about nature, such as storms or sunrises, and so perhaps in some circuitous way, this painting is also about her poetry. To learn more about her passion for plants visit: https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/biography/special-topics/emily-dickinson-and-gardening/.
My second portrait is about one of my favorite writers who wrote the beloved Chronicles of Narnia series, with hints of Greek mythology and even an allegory of the creation story in the book, The Magician’s Nephew. I wanted to make a portrait that showed the creative process of Lewis’s writing and the flow of new ideas. I likened creativity as fire and used that as a way to contain the various characters concerned in these chronicles of Narnia books.
This piece was closer to home for me because although I do love nature and being out in it, I feel that creativity is a large part of me, and I would feel empty without it, I think. It is good to remember that there are rewards to creativity and making things, especially when paintings don’t turn out so well, which I experienced yesterday when I was trying to complete a painting that has been languishing in my studio. Needless to say, it did not go well. And instead of calling it a loss and going to do something else, to give myself time to think about what I didn’t like about the painting, I just kept adding different mediums to the dried acrylic paint, to see what would happen. The lesson here was, paint mindfully, and not mindlessly. Thanks for stopping by!
I am slowly making progress toward my goal of making 20 new artworks based on poetry quotes. When complete, I am hoping to submit them as a portfolio to apply to graduate school for a masters in fine art, so I can teach college-level art classes. Over the past few weeks, I have been noticing a thread of common themes, one of which is my childhood. For some its a time of nostalgia, and for others, something to forget. For me, its a mixed bag, and the few memories I have from early childhood are fragmented, with few details. I took inspiration for this piece from many personal photos and from Billy Collin’s poem, Forgetfulness. The piece was created in stages with gouache sepia-toned paints, acrylic paints, gesso, and soft pastel with a limited color palette.
Childhood Memory Loss, Gouache and soft pastel, and acrylic paint, 16 x 13 inches, Jodie Schmidt, 2020.
I took additional inspiration from this artwork by searching for poems written about the subject of forgetfulness. I found this gem of a quote from Billy Collin’s poem, “Forgetfulness,” “As if one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village with no phones.” Though the poem does not specifically address the issue of childhood amnesia, I felt it captured the feeling that memories are unstable and sometimes inaccessible.
I can remember small details, like elementary school book fairs, and my love of reading, library visits with my father, and being outdoors a lot on my favorite tire swing. However, more specific details have been more difficult to access, such as specific memories of how I got along with my sisters, who were many years older. It’s as if a giant hand has wiped out these memories, and without the aid of family photos and my mother’s memories, I would really be at a loss. All of this inspired me to make a pastel and gouache collage based on family photos of things I can no longer remember. This series has been a marathon, and a mirror, endless practice, mistakes, and setbacks. And all the while, it’s holding up a mirror to all of the weaknesses I have as an artist, especially in figure drawing and composition. How I wish I had paid more attention to figure drawing class as an art student! So, whatever the outcome of this series might be, getting into graduate school or not, it has been a journey chock full of lessons and opportunities to grow as an artist. Thanks for reading!
Hello Friends, family, and fans, At long last, I am posting some progress photos of my series, Constructed realities. They are still mostly in the phase 2 stage of color sketches, but they are coming along. So many things seem to get in the way of making time for art, I have got to start making this more of a priority. I often wonder how other creative types, such as Jane Austen, made time to write so prodigiously despite overwhelming household chores that were required during the 19th century in a family without servants or modern conveniences. Even when she was dying she managed to crank out a new book, Sanitation, which was left unfinished because of her death.
This poem is inspired by a poem by William Wordsworth, entitled The World is too Much with us, about the dangers of industrialization and how we may lose our connection with nature, and eventually with ourselves, due to greed. “The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers,;-Little we see in nature that is ours; We have given our souls away, a sordid boon! WordsworthHere is another mixed media piece in progress. It’s based on a fantasy I have about going back to being a child, as represented by the multiple figures that get smaller as you follow the path. Sometimes adulting is just too hard, and I long for carefree days full of energy, health, and creativity. Here is a quote from a writer Mary Oliver which nicely sums up this idea: “Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor.” Mary OliverThis is an unfinished piece about the fleeting nature of time and youth. I have used several symbols to illustrate this, such as the clock and the grim reaper. The other supporting characters are myself and my husband, back when we were about 12 years younger. It’s about not letting too much time pass before you make important decisions. For us it was about getting married. The poem which inspired this piece states: “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying, And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying.” Robert Herrick, To the Virgins, Make Much of Time.This piece is about emotionality, and especially about anxiety. I used bright contrasting colors here to try and emphasize the jarring and explosive nature of anxiety and symptoms associated with it, which can easily turn your world upside down, difficulty breathing, making decisions, sleeping, avoidance behaviors, etc. Its a subject close to my heart, because I suffer from generalized anxiety disorder and have had to work very hard to not let it take over my life. Several of my family members have it too, hence the DNA strands. Here is a quote from Emily Dickinson that inspired it: “In this short Life that only lasts an hour How much- how- little is within our power.
Despite the obstacles of daily life, she made time to write. I hope I can follow her example and bring my passion, time, and energy into making art, no matter what obstacles I face. I am taking stock of my progress so far to try and gain some more objectivity about the work still to be done, and to see the progress in hopes that it will motivate me to make more art! As mentioned in earlier blog posts this series is based on quotes from poetry, and a small portion of the quote will be added to the artwork so you can get the gist of what feelings and moods I hoped to convey in these pieces.
Hello Friends, I am recycling an old blog post here, because it seems so relevant to the struggle I have had in getting this new series, Voices, and Visions off the ground. It has taken me several months to get traction, but I finally have some sketches to share! At last! The series is about the human condition, and is inspired by poems, by writers such as Williams Wordsworth, who wrote the poem, “The World is too much with us.” Though it was written several hundred years ago, in 1807, about the conflicts between our connection to nature, and the pull of materialism driven by the industrial revolution in England during the 19th century, it still seems so relevant today. Anyways, on to the blog post, which is about the Artist’s Block.
What is Artist’s Block?
Art of Schmidt Blog Post
This year has been a difficult one with lots of transitions and changes. One of these big changes was my decision to drop out of the Human Services Associate’s degree program at Frederick Community College, after 18 months of double-mindedness between feeling like I had to finish it because I didn’t have any other solid plans for my career, and I had already put in countless hours writing papers, studying and completely fieldwork. I had felt burnt out and unmotivated to finish the program, and I also felt split in half between my desire to be a professional artist and the need to carve out a definite career plan for myself. It was a difficult decision but I finally decided to drop out after some soul searching and talking with my academic advisor for a variety of reasons. In addition, the workload that this academic program demanded left very little time for creating art. And if I am 100 percent honest with myself, I have always wanted to take my art to the next level beyond just a hobby, but felt unsure of how to pursue this goal after I graduated from McDaniel College with a degree in Art in 2005, and it didn’t seem “practical” to pursue art as anything more than a hobby. I always felt somewhat unsure if Social Work was really the right path for me in contrast.
Lately, I have been learning that creative time is important to me and my well being. Creating artwork has been an outlet for me at various times in my life during stressful moments and personal struggles, especially during my father’s long illness and eventual death in 2011 from heart disease. Making paintings and drawings in oil, watercolor, pastel, and pencil has provided me with a safe way to process difficult feelings and emotions. However, lately, making art has been very challenging and more like a test of endurance and skill than the oasis or refuge it used to be. In spite of the difficulties, I have been pressing on with sketches and paintings to prepare for my October art show at the Frederick Coffee Company as Artist of the month. However, the joy I once felt in making art seems to have deserted me. I am making very slow progress with starting only 1-2 paintings a week, after looking at some reference photos I took of Catoctin State Park, here in Thurmont, MD. What is going on here? How can I go from feeling like creating artwork is my lifeline, to it has become my enemy and tormentor and relentless critic? After reading an article, entitled, “7 Types of Creative Block(And what to do About Them)”, by Mark McGuiness, I think I am beginning to understand that this lack of forwarding motion is the dreaded Artist’s Block that seems to afflict creative types from a variety of field from musicians, writers, and artists.
This weekend is your last chance to bid on my box, Solitude, which illustrates the poem, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening. The last night to bid is Saturday, March 24 from 5 pm-9 pm. So if you wanted to grab my box, here is your last chance! A perfect gift for people who love poetry, illustration and art. The link to the art gallery is
Solitude, Mixed Media, 2018, Jodie Schmidt.Solitude, Mixed Media, 2018, Jodie Schmidt.Flyer for On and Off the Wall, The Artists’ Gallery, Frederick, MD
It’s that time again for me to get cracking on my box for the annual Box Show which will be displayed at The Artists’ Gallery in Frederick, MD during the month of March. I have been a participant in this show for many years and every time I make artwork for it, I learn something new and literally learn to think “outside the box.” My work will be featured with several other local Frederick Artists and all art will be for sale via silent auction at the gallery. For more details about the art show, click on the following link: http://www.theartistsgalleryfrederick.com/.
Here are a few examples of the boxes I worked on in previous box shows at the Artists’ Gallery in Frederick,
Johnny Cash, Mixed Media, 2014, Jodie Schmidt.
Johnny Cash, Mixed Media, 2014, Jodie Schmidt.
Alice in Wonderland, Mixed Media, 2016, Jodie Schmidt.
Alice in Wonderland, Mixed Media, 2016, Jodie Schmidt.
Md. The themes for the boxes range from The Chronicles of Narnia, Johnny Cash, Alice in Wonderland and this year I will be illustrating Robert Frost’s poem, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening. I will post additional photos of this year’s box as soon as I start making more progress on it. I hope to have the sketches for the box transferred to it by this weekend so I can start painting the box with acrylic paint. Thanks for stopping by!
It’s been several weeks since I have blogged, and the reasons are many. Some new responsibilities as my mom’s caregiver, due to her shoulder replacement surgery in October, lots of hours at work, and a new custom order, among other things. Also, I keep trying to think of the perfect topic that will be entertaining to my audience and informative. And yet, when I do that I feel like I am not being my genuine self, and that leads to more inertia. So instead, I decided to share my artist statement for my new poetry illustration series, Voices, and Visions. So here it is.
This is an oil painting which depicts the feeling of creative block. It is symbolized by the desert landscape and the pregnant woman, as well as the bean plant growth cycle.This oil painting is an interpretation of Robert Frost’s poem, The Secret Sits. It is also inspired by a music video by the Cranberries, called Ordinary Day, in which the main character chases her younger self to try and resolve unfinished business.
Voices and Visions
How does an idea for a painting get born? For me, it’s sometimes a memory being re-played, hearing a song lyric that resonates with me, reading a poem that lends itself to telling a story or visiting an inspiring art exhibit. This series focuses on the connection between stories described in the written word, such as poetry, song lyrics, and quotes and the visual narratives that illustrate these works. The works may describe a feeling, a memory, a season, or some universal truth described in color, metaphor or symbols. Perhaps this series has been percolating in me for years, since 2005, in fact, when I graduated from McDaniel College with an art degree. My art mentor, Steve Pearson, who is now (Assistant Professor at McDaniel College), sparked an interest in me about how to make artwork that communicated personal truths and ideas.
To facilitate the creative process, he recommended that I keep a sketchbook and collect artwork that inspired me. This process would help me to identify the themes that mattered most to me and to write a content-based artist statement. Lastly, I created a series of work that described these themes through color, symbols, composition, etc. It’s been several years since then and I have had a lot of experiences since then, read books, listened to music, attended concerts, had different jobs, and pursued different artistic subject media, such as the portrait, and more recently still life and landscape. But I keep coming back to artwork that has a meaning or a story to tell in my artwork, and especially to the portrait which was the first subject that ignited my interest in art. One significant event that sparked this recurrent theme, and they are: 1.) A drawing class that I took at Frederick Community College.
In January of 2015, I took a drawing course at Frederick Community College in Frederick, MD. One of the final assignments I tackled was to illustrate a poem using pastels. A major challenge in this assignment was to find a poem that had some concrete images to illustrate and not a poem that was too esoteric and abstract. I chose Robert Frost’s poem, Ghost House, which has an abundance of concrete imagery. The first lines, “I dwell in a lonely house I know, that vanished nearly a summer ago and left no trace but the cellar walls…” (Frost) gripped me with a strong visual picture. I immediately thought of a derelict house and tried to create a narrative about this haunted house.
Slowly different images popped into my head, a derelict house, a ghost bride, a tree, a path, and some crows. To facilitate this process, I collected artwork that inspired on Google image searches and checked out library books on vampires and fantasy creatures. My next step was to create a Photoshop file collage with images based on this poem. I completed the artwork by creating a drawing based off of the collage and finished with soft pastels. To create this current body of work, I have followed this same process of creating a notebook of images that inspired, and piecing them together in PhotoShop to create my own unique compositions. I also did searches on Pinterest for the artwork of interest and looked for examples of poetry illustrations to see how other artists have tackled this subject. And I read books on poetry or did Google searches to look for poems that lent themselves visual depiction. Some of the poetry that has inspired these works is verses written by Emily Dickinson, Maya Angelou, Robert Frost, and T.S. Elliot.
Thank you for stopping by and reading my artist statement! Have a wonderful week!
by William Wordsworth. Although this poem was written in the 19th century, the theme of capitalism and greed is still relevant today. I think that’s what makes great art and poetry, something is written or painted in the past, which still resonates today! If you are working on an artwork or other creative project and feel stuck, I hope this post will help give you encouragement to carry on, or just start over again.
and is inspired by poems, by writers such as Williams Wordsworth, who wrote the poem, “The World is too much with us.” Though it was written several hundred years ago, in 1807, about the conflicts between our connection to nature, and the pull of materialism driven by the industrial revolution in England during the 19th century, it still seems so relevant today. Anyways, on to the blog post, which is about the Artist’s Block.
Art of Schmidt 
