Composition with Umber II Painting

Julie Schumer, a native of Los Angeles, California, lives and paints in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She discovered her love of abstract expressionism at age 5. A lawyer for many years, Schumer is self-taught. Her work is shown in various galleries across the United States and is in numerous private collections. Schumer produced the award winning film, The Twilight Angel, about the artistic process and struggle. Schumer paints large and medium sized abstracts in an expressionist and gestural style. She paints smaller works on paper as preparation for the larger canvas works. These works are inspired by the great natural beauty and light of her surroundings in New Mexico. She starts by introducing color, shapes and line, then responds to their development in an intuitive fashion, layer after layer. More recently she has explored a limited, neutral palette with appearing and disappearing lines and emerging and dissolving forms. These works are at once mysterious, moody, and powerful yet luminous as the result of many layers of paint applied and removed and reflect upon the fragility and vulnerability of life.