The Artwork Of Carl Schuman

by Paul Mclean, Art Critic, InReview Magazine

Santa Fe artist Carl Schuman’s artwork is a transportational device for consciousness – a thought-car. Schuman is pursuing beauty through the metphysical and, more specificly, internal silence. Schuman depicts the stuff of dreams and vision, emerging from the quiet inside that’s a requisite for meditation which the artist has practiced for some thirty years. Schuman constructs multi-dimensional blueprints of the internal spiritual experience using unlikely materials like museum board, prismacolor pencils, thread and watercolor.

The meticulously crafted shapes (which function as the substrate for his imagery) present a visual conumdrum for the viewer. They exhit the fragility one would expect from assemblages made of museum board, but - due to Schuman’s intutive engineering skills and tenacity – they have the same visual gravity that M.C. Escher’s puzzles have.

Schuman’s artwork magicly incorporates air, the ether, negative space – absence – as visualelements with a perception-bending power every bit as convincing as, say, shading to produce the illusion of depth (another tool he uses). This is Schuman’s artistic gift: to fill the viod without erasing it.

Another facet of his work worth noting is Schuman’s marvelous use of color. His painstakingly applied and blended of brilliant layers of color push the limits of his medium. The luminous surfaces are achieved through the process, directly related to classical painting techniques, of assidously overlaying ‘glazes’ of color from dark to light. The result is the lustrous jewel-like depth of hue that the viewer sees in Schuman’s finished works. This formula for beauty is consistent with the artist’s metaphysical aesthetic, an apt metaphor for the process of enlightenment.

The imagery found in the artwork of Carl Schuman is likewise drawn from ancient tradition. However, the artist’s pictorial language is more closely related to spiritual traditions than those of modern secular art (though of course there is some crossover). Feathers, candles, pyramids, stars, crosses, dwellings, celestial bodies and light – these are the immediately familiar visual icons recurring in Schuman’s images. They float about or within otherworldly landscapes that inevitably contain ‘windows’ to a vaster ‘beyond’.

The abstract decorative patterning found throughtout the body of work, both contians and frees the more literal imagery.

Schuman’s assemblages evoke mandalas and other kaleidoscopic spirital/visual meditation tools, designed to both absorb the viewers attention and liberate his senses. The effect is accentuated by the 3D quality of Schuman’s constructions. Whether they are freestanding or suspended from the ceiling, or hung on the wall, his pieces seem to float within their environment. A distinct invitation is presented to the viewer to stop, rest, and experience the artwork in a conscious way. Carl Schuman’s work is about harmonious exchange between the artist and his audience, designed to encourage the viewer to establish a similar exchage within himself.