Chance 004 Painting

KJ Schumacher (b.1978) was born in Nashville, where he currently lives and works. He studied Art History, Fine Arts and Painting at Parsons School of Design in Paris and the George Washington University in Washington D.C., where earned the Presidential Arts Scholarship and graduated in 2001 with a Bachelor of Arts. Schumacher's work is included in prominent collections throughout the Southeast and has been exhibited in solo and groups shows in Nashville, Los Angeles, London and New York. He is a teacher of Fine Art at the prestigious Montgomery Bell Academy in Nashville. This work is about mark making and the studio process. Moreover, it is about the marks left over as a result of the studio process, the remnants, and their intrinsic significance. As I celebrate the smudge, scrape, wipe, roll, drip, spill, imprint, and stain as formal elements, I combine these marks with intention, while also allowing chance encounters within the process of creation. Fortuitous juxtaposition and willful experimentation set up a duality between intention and accident. That duality is an enduring focus of these works. Carefully prepared grounds and chalk lines fashioned after ruled paper organize a structured matrix on which the studio remnants assert themselves. As subsequent layers interact, this duality creates new arrangements, tensions, and harmonies. Further, the work speaks to universal themes concerning rules and structure, both as foundational constructs and as barriers to be crossed.