Jon Schueler: Catalog


Activities & Experiments Catalog Chronology Itinerary Response Weather Resources Works on Display Schueler: About the Sky Main Page Jon Schueler Site SBC Art Gallery Main Site	Jon Schueler: About the Sky Catalog 1 \| 2 \| 3 \| 4 \| 5 \| 6 \| 7 \| 8 \| 9 \| 10 Schueler's career in New York looked promising, but in the mid-fifties the movie I Know Where I'm Going, filmed in the Western Highlands, served to remind him of his wartime desire to travel there. Never without a female companion for long, Schueler married Joellen (Jody) Hall in 1956, and they began to make plans to go to Scotland together. Schueler sailed on September 5, 1957, and set up housekeeping in the little fishing village of Mallaig in the Western Highlands, in advance of Jody's arrival in November. In the meantime he described the crossing in a letter to her: On the last day we passed just to the north of the Scilly Islands, which lie off Land's End-and they were beautiful beyond belief. Rough, craggy, with a grey, sometimes misty sky. Waves beating against the rocks, throwing spray fifty feet into the air. Dimly seen views of sandy inlets and green fields-tantalizing like a striptease. The light of the sun breaking through silver white, hard on the turbulent water, blinding, hard and powerful. God-this is what I had come three thousand miles to see-and this was the first thing I saw! I could ask for no more. I was certain that the west coast of Scotland would be like that.... One of the most significant experiences of Schueler's life came soon after his arrival in Mallaig. He was invited to accompany a local fisherman, Jim Manson, who was to become another of the painter's "heroes," on a fishing expedition. This was the first of a number of trips to sea over the ensuing years, expeditions which were as fraught with fear as his war-time flights had been. Schueler's compulsion to repeat the encounter with death was inextricably tied to the guilt he felt as a survivor in combat amidst the loss of many comrades. Guilt of a more complex nature existed in connection with his mother, who had died when Schueler was six months old, a trauma that was to obsess him throughout his life and become the source of a major theme in his work, the Woman in the Sky. You should have seen me at the wheel of the Margaret Ann on Friday-dusk, heavy sea, turbulent tides and wind, boat pitching and rolling so that you could only stand up by hanging on, spray over the decks and against the window of the wheelhouse....I loved it loved it loved it. ...Now understand, these guys are just going out to do a job.... But to Schueler, it was a voyage into the jaws of death.... One is reminded of Turner's adventure at sea in anticipation of his great Snowstorm at Sea: Steamboat off a Harbor's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water and Going by the Lead, 1842. For the Royal Academy catalog, Turner wrote in the third person: " `The author was in this storm on the night the Ariel left Harwich,' " and, he explained later that "he had had himself tied to the mast, and did not think he would survive, `but I felt bound to record it if I did.'" Schueler, like Turner, felt the need to experience nature directly. "I took on Turner as a hero because I felt that he had an eye which broke through style and broke through even the idea of style, destroyed style in an effort to find some real relationship with nature, which I don't think any other painter has since." Despite serious tensions between Schueler and Jody, he completed forty-five paintings during their time in Scotland. It is in Skye, 1957 (cat #7), that a horizon appears most emphatically, however it is present less distinctly, appearing and disappearing in the paint in Rudha Raonuill, 1957, and Rain, 1958 (cat #9). In The Bay at Mallaig Vaig, 1957, it is placed higher in the picture, seen faintly above an expanse of vivid blue. In these works paint is applied with the palette knife and the brush. Regarding Rain, he wrote, "The thought for it started the other night walking home late from Mallaig in the snow--the storm up near Loch Nevis in the sound--was umber, dirty, dark, foreboding."
Catalog Main Page \| 1 \| 2 \| 3 \| 4 \| 5 \| 6 \| 7 \| 8 \| 9 \| 10
Activities & Experiments \| Catalog \| Chronology \| Itinerary \| Response \| Weather Resources \| Works on Display Schueler: About the Sky Main Page \| Jon Schueler Site \| SBC Art Gallery Main Site
http://www.artgallery.sbc.edu/exhibits/99_00/schueler/catalog3.html This page was created and is maintained by Jaime Henna, 2002. Direct questions or comments to Professor Rebecca Massie Lane, Director of the College Galleries and the Arts Management Program. Last updated on February 6, 2000.


Activities & Experiments Catalog Chronology Itinerary Response Weather Resources Works on Display Schueler: About the Sky Main Page Jon Schueler Site SBC Art Gallery Main Site	Jon Schueler: About the Sky Catalog 1 \| 2 \| 3 \| 4 \| 5 \| 6 \| 7 \| 8 \| 9 \| 10 Schueler's career in New York looked promising, but in the mid-fifties the movie I Know Where I'm Going, filmed in the Western Highlands, served to remind him of his wartime desire to travel there. Never without a female companion for long, Schueler married Joellen (Jody) Hall in 1956, and they began to make plans to go to Scotland together. Schueler sailed on September 5, 1957, and set up housekeeping in the little fishing village of Mallaig in the Western Highlands, in advance of Jody's arrival in November. In the meantime he described the crossing in a letter to her: On the last day we passed just to the north of the Scilly Islands, which lie off Land's End-and they were beautiful beyond belief. Rough, craggy, with a grey, sometimes misty sky. Waves beating against the rocks, throwing spray fifty feet into the air. Dimly seen views of sandy inlets and green fields-tantalizing like a striptease. The light of the sun breaking through silver white, hard on the turbulent water, blinding, hard and powerful. God-this is what I had come three thousand miles to see-and this was the first thing I saw! I could ask for no more. I was certain that the west coast of Scotland would be like that.... One of the most significant experiences of Schueler's life came soon after his arrival in Mallaig. He was invited to accompany a local fisherman, Jim Manson, who was to become another of the painter's "heroes," on a fishing expedition. This was the first of a number of trips to sea over the ensuing years, expeditions which were as fraught with fear as his war-time flights had been. Schueler's compulsion to repeat the encounter with death was inextricably tied to the guilt he felt as a survivor in combat amidst the loss of many comrades. Guilt of a more complex nature existed in connection with his mother, who had died when Schueler was six months old, a trauma that was to obsess him throughout his life and become the source of a major theme in his work, the Woman in the Sky. You should have seen me at the wheel of the Margaret Ann on Friday-dusk, heavy sea, turbulent tides and wind, boat pitching and rolling so that you could only stand up by hanging on, spray over the decks and against the window of the wheelhouse....I loved it loved it loved it. ...Now understand, these guys are just going out to do a job.... But to Schueler, it was a voyage into the jaws of death.... One is reminded of Turner's adventure at sea in anticipation of his great Snowstorm at Sea: Steamboat off a Harbor's Mouth Making Signals in Shallow Water and Going by the Lead, 1842. For the Royal Academy catalog, Turner wrote in the third person: " `The author was in this storm on the night the Ariel left Harwich,' " and, he explained later that "he had had himself tied to the mast, and did not think he would survive, `but I felt bound to record it if I did.'" Schueler, like Turner, felt the need to experience nature directly. "I took on Turner as a hero because I felt that he had an eye which broke through style and broke through even the idea of style, destroyed style in an effort to find some real relationship with nature, which I don't think any other painter has since." Despite serious tensions between Schueler and Jody, he completed forty-five paintings during their time in Scotland. It is in Skye, 1957 (cat #7), that a horizon appears most emphatically, however it is present less distinctly, appearing and disappearing in the paint in Rudha Raonuill, 1957, and Rain, 1958 (cat #9). In The Bay at Mallaig Vaig, 1957, it is placed higher in the picture, seen faintly above an expanse of vivid blue. In these works paint is applied with the palette knife and the brush. Regarding Rain, he wrote, "The thought for it started the other night walking home late from Mallaig in the snow--the storm up near Loch Nevis in the sound--was umber, dirty, dark, foreboding."
Catalog Main Page \| 1 \| 2 \| 3 \| 4 \| 5 \| 6 \| 7 \| 8 \| 9 \| 10
Activities & Experiments \| Catalog \| Chronology \| Itinerary \| Response \| Weather Resources \| Works on Display Schueler: About the Sky Main Page \| Jon Schueler Site \| SBC Art Gallery Main Site
http://www.artgallery.sbc.edu/exhibits/99_00/schueler/catalog3.html This page was created and is maintained by Jaime Henna, 2002. Direct questions or comments to Professor Rebecca Massie Lane, Director of the College Galleries and the Arts Management Program. Last updated on February 6, 2000.