Amy Schnoll
Artist’s Statement - Amy Schnoll I started drawing as soon as I knew how to hold a pencil. At the age of 10, my father, who was an artist himself, recognized my talent and enrolled me in lessons at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. I kept my sketch books from my high school days as per the instruction of a wonderful art teacher there. She taught me how to really see and then interpret the works and encouraged me to develop my own style. That was when I knew that art was the only thing I ever wanted to do. I wanted to become a full-time artist. I am extremely dyslexic, so I poured my heart and soul into learning as much as I could about art and artists. In college at the University of Texas, Austin, TX, I studied drawing, painting, print making (etchings), pottery, and jewelry making. I realized that I could earn a good living from making jewelry mostly from lost wax casting and setting precious stones. I won a competition held by the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts where 2 of my pieces were on display. I moved from Austin to Houston, TX, where I had many clients who commissioned high end jewelry. I made jewelry for 23 years and then turned back to my original roots painting in mostly acrylic. I specialized in figurative and portrait paintings. I did many commissions in both pencil, ink, and acrylic paintings and drawings. I am fascinated by the human form. I moved to North Texas and went back to school at the University of North Texas and studied watercolor continuing my undergraduate years with Rob Erdle. I then took master classes with Millie Giles. I learned how to master watercolor that I also mixed with collage. My collage papers were made by manipulating different surfaces and utilizing wax and marbling papers. I also used watercolor inks, Daniel Smith watercolors creating large paintings that I would tear into smaller pieces as I needed them for my collage work. While studying with Rob, I did a series of paintings/collages of women in yoga poses. These were made into diptychs. I would pick a pose, do a mixed media piece, and then reverse the image in the opposite direction and do a completely different image. They worked out as a single image or as a diptych. For my masters, I did a series, The Art of Aging, done in diptychs and triptychs. In these finely detailed watercolor paintings, I was telling the story about aging and the significant changes people experience physically, emotionally, and spiritually. My subjects were young men and women in the college town of Denton, TX. They had chosen to adorn themselves in a variety of ways with piercings, tattoos, or extreme hairstyles. This made them intriguing as people to imagine aging to 60 or 70 years of age. I used extremely thin washes of watercolor laid down many times to create life like images. A small amount of gouache was used for the finishing touches to highlight their hair. I plan to have a retrospect of my work. Part of my retrospective will include many drawings and etchings from early in my career, to my present works. I will also be including my sculptures in clay. I started working in clay about three years ago and love making whimsical characters. My art show will include a 4 ft tall totem pole that has five different fun pieces. I also have a sculpture called Mr. Chan and another that is a planter titled Mrs. Rosenbloom. I recently created a 1950’s television console with a hand coming out of the TV turning the dials. My most current series of work is watercolor and some collage portraits of women over 70. I am 75 and I notice that as I age, I have become more invisible. This is not true as we are still very much alive and productive. We come from every profession and every color. This stage of our lives can be very rewarding and open new paths to accomplishing a variety of things. At the same time, I am also working on pet commissions from pictures that their owners have shared with me - immortalizing those souls.

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