AN AMERICAN PAINTER
Stephen Schultz has been a professional artist for 58 years. With constant dedication, he has produced an average of 10-12 completed works per year. Scaling in the range of 60-90” x 60-144,” his large scale work creates a dramatic impact in a space.
He holds a rich cache of experience and work in the world of art. He earned a BFA from San Fransisco Art Institute in 1971. He then moved to Stanford University on a teaching fellowship and received his MFA in 1974. He later worked as a tenured professor of Art at University of Iowa , Iowa City, where he retired after 19 years.
Stephen spent several years living and working in Europe, including notable artist residencies. These residencies included Rockefeller Foundation at Lake Como, Italy; Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France; and Fullbright Foundation in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
His work has been published in Art News, Art in America and The New York Times, just to mention a few. He has a long history of exhibitions in such venues as the Smithsonian Institute, Equitable Gallery of the Whitney, as well as galleries nationwide from Los Angeles to New York.
From 2006 to 2018, Stephen has had regular exhibits in galleries in Paris, France; Hydra, Greece; Milan, Italy; and London, England. He is currently working on a new body of work and is scheduling upcoming exhibitions.
To learn about Stephen and his lifetime of work, follow his instagram page @stephenschultzart and stay posted, as his chronological biography is posted every weekday. From his earliest beginnings to present day, the Instagram project is telling his vast story as a lifelong artist.
“…aware of a striving, a yearning. The making of many impossible attempts at a kind of transmutation—a searching for a formula for the magical conjuring of the unknowable. Many times the end seems just within reach, only to fly to pieces before me as I reach for it…very close to the alchemists of old; and like them, I have in the end reached some enlightenment in the realization that my work entails a kind of symbolic self-involvement in the very processes of life itself.” —Alan Davie, 1958
Stephen Schultz was born in 1946, in Chicago Illinois. He grew up in New England and was always near the ocean or lake throughout his childhood and adolescent years.
Water has been a main element, as depicted in many of Stephen’s paintings throughout the years. One can see how his earliest surroundings influenced his art.
Water has always seemed, to him, a perfect metaphor of the reality of a painting. The painting starts as a flux, not unlike the element of water. The paint is like the ocean, both mutable and palpable.
Stephen married artist Romey Stuckart in 1984 after living together for 3 years. Their travels led them from Italy, France and Spain, to Egypt, Thailand and India. They drifted along the waters of Lake Como, The Seine, The Mediterranean, The Nile and The Indian. Kally Thurman, friend and art curator writes, “Throughout their journeys, they painted in well appointed to makeshift spaces; where they flourished and the work spoke.”
The couple moved to Hope, Idaho in 1987, where they submersed themselves in their individual creations of large bodies of artwork. For thirty-four years, he and Romey shared a life together in this beautiful area of the Northern United States as their home base; starting in Hope and then moving to nearby Sandpoint, Idaho. Sadly, Stephen lost Romey to Cancer in 2020. He continues to live and work in the home and studio space that they built together.
“My paintings are an amalgam of autobiography and archetype of current event, history and myth.”
Above is a metamorphic depiction of Stephen in 1974 and 2023, with an old gurney that he still uses as a paint palette to this day.
“My intent is that the narrative speak of a specific and personal moment, while at the same time addressing a more generalized concept of the human condition.” Stephen Schultz
Below - Stephen in one of his earliest studio’s, 1973
STEPHEN SCHULTZ'S personal and artistic roots stretch well beyond the contemporary era.
His deep engagement with the history of Western Art has caused him to study the spectrum of that art and to spend extended periods of time in Europe. His view is global and timeless, yet grounded in the quest of the individual for a larger understanding of our existence and its possible relevance to history.
"My paintings are an amalgam of autobiography and archetype of current event, history and myth.”
Schultz builds a world with individual consciousness; as an artist, his reality is not only the normal progression of events, foibles of character, but also the context of painting as an integral part of the definition of human endeavor. While the scope of the influences is large, the starting point of his exploration over the years has been the immediate surroundings of his studio.
Based in the here and now of physical reality, his surrealistic approach is not only architectural space but a deep involvement and exploration of the human figure. In the early 1970's Schultz took his immediate interior space, and elaborated on it by combining multiple perspectives — mirror images, dramatic lighting, and the enigmatic presence of the figure. The resulting microcosms of the everyday world brought a sense of unreality to the real, a presence of a world familiar and yet suspended in time. When figures are present, they are mysteriously engaged, back-lit or cropped by the edges of the canvas to make their presence ambiguous, as if only they have the key to their attendance.
The figures are not intended to be an individual, but THE individual. Early on, the figures were recognizable as the artist and or his wife Romey--not as subject but as model in another story. In 1990, “The Paint People” emerged and have been present in Stephen’s work since. These beings seem other worldly. They are consistent in appearance, with body shape and features—such as oversized hands and rounded faces. The noses are slightly oversized and always prominent. These beings were incorporated with the intensely mysterious interiors…and repeated symbols-which are a mainstay in Schultz’s work. What emerged was surrealism—a mythic strata in which the artist confronted himself.
