Teresa Schmidt: 2011 Friends of the Beach Museum of Art Gift Print Artist

April 15, 2011 – December 11, 2011

Ruth Ann Wefald Gallery
Manhattan-based artist Teresa Schmidt is the 2011 Friends of the Beach Museum of Art gift print artist. She teaches printmaking and drawing at Kansas State University, where she has been a faculty member since 1972. This exhibition will include some twenty of her works, including her gift print for the Friends.

Schmidt is known for her highly expressive, large-scale drawings in graphite and related intaglio and lithographic prints. Most of the artist’s work draws its energy from the landscape, the figure, and everyday objects. The abstracted images present powerful emotions and ideas. The recent “Portal Series,” for example, takes as its theme the death of Schmidt’s parents, who both recently succumbed to cancer. The artist says her graphite drawings respond to “nature, time, and intimacy.” Drawing, she says, “brings to my life a heightened sense of the now … the reality that we are alive right this second.”

Schmidt received her BA and MA from Central Washington University, Ellenburg, in 1969 and 1970. She earned her MFA from Washington State University, Pullman, in 1972. She has also taught in Washington State, Arbroath, Scotland, and Norwich, England, and lectured in several states. Her work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions and reproduced in several publications, including studies by K-State women’s studies professor Torry Dickinson.

This exhibition is generously sponsored by the Friends of the Beach Museum of Art Business Partners.