Carolyn Schlam

Carolyn Schlam’s work is rooted in painting, collage, and mixed media, with an emphasis on the expressive possibilities of the female figure. Born into an immigrant family in the Bronx, she understood herself as an artist from childhood. Her mother recalls her studying magazine pictures from her crib, while writing entered her practice later as a way to articulate ideas first understood through drawing.

Over the course of her career, Schlam has worked in glass, ceramics, and wood sculpture, using each medium to expand her visual vocabulary. She repeatedly returns to painting and collage, however, because of their directness and accessibility. More recently, she has begun incorporating fabric, decorative paper, hair, buttons, and other found materials into oil-painted surfaces. These additions introduce texture and pattern while extending the decorative and tactile qualities of the work.

Schlam’s images are primarily figurative, and most often focus on women. Her interest is less in naturalistic depiction than in the emotional force a figure can carry. “My purpose is not verisimilitude, but emotional believability,” she explains. A blue nose or an unexpected color can therefore remain convincing if the painted figure feels psychologically present.

Her materials frequently emerge from ordinary encounters. One recent shift began while she was looking for a way to create a pattern in a painting of a woman sitting with her cat. In a fabric-store discount bin, she found textiles that offered a solution. She cut and adhered them to the canvas and was immediately drawn to the result. That discovery has led to a sustained exploration of textiles within her practice.

Alongside her studio work, Schlam is an art writer. She has published four books on art and has a fifth manuscript, Art Is Not a Pretty Picture, currently with her agent. Her writing is an extension of a lifetime spent making and looking at art. It allows her to share what she has learned, introduce artists to new readers, and offer a record of the joy and meaning art has brought to her life.

Her latest published book, More Joy of Art, introduces a range of living artists, both established and lesser known. Schlam’s approach to criticism is deliberately generous. Rather than concentrating on fault, she looks for the value within a work and the effort behind it. As a practicing artist, she understands the vulnerability involved in presenting one’s skill, decisions, and emotional investment to an audience.

For Schlam, artmaking also offers a practical form of self-knowledge. What appears on the canvas can reveal a maker’s values, interests, and preoccupations. Painting does not simply produce an image. It gives the artist a means of seeing thought and feeling more clearly through the work itself.

This fall, Schlam will present a solo exhibition, Flora, at the Cunneen-Hackett Art Center. The exhibition will include the textile-inflected paintings that have become an important part of her recent work, bringing together her interest in figuration, surface, color, and material play.