Tom Schiller Studio

2023

24" x 24"

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This painting started out as a sketch for a piece about a tennis court. That idea was discarded several years ago.

I saw it recently among some other drawings and, after a lot of changes, decided to work up something new from it. Now it is a painting on a birch panel.

2017, revised 2020

19” x 24” x 2”

Acrylic on panel

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2016

20" x 20"

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Basically a color sketch for a painting on the theme of studio interiors.

2018

35" x 32"

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An essentially abstract painting which wants the viewer to associate it with the built environment.

2019

35" x 32"

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I intended this one to be a companion painting to "Structural.” Together they were to form a diptych (paintings meant to be seen together as a pair). But I failed because it turned out to be too different in several ways. Now it's a painting that comes from the same parent, but doesn't look much like a close relative.

2019

35" x 31"

SOLD

They tell artists to paint what's around them. This is a mostly flattened image of suburbia and I thought about suggesting a person off-canvas who is walking a dog which was to be visible at the lower left, pulling at his leash. But I thought it would have been too Norman Rockwell, so I didn't.

2018

35" x 32"

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This painting started out as just another imaginary interior sketch, but as I worked on it I saw a chance to make an image suggesting that the two chairs spontaneously grew out of the bottom of the framed painting which appears at the center.

I thought this was surreal enough to be an interesting surprise to anyone seeing it.

This piece was shown in Galex 54, a 2019 national open exhibition in Illinois.

2019

36" x 31.5"

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These two paintings form an image consisting of two parts (a diptych) which are meant to be seen together as a related pair, each one being an extension of the other.

2017

33" x 39"

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This is part of the series I started in 2016 which came from memories of the desert, not from photos or sketches.

I also took a page from Georgia O'Keeffe's book when I painted the horizontal strokes suggesting clouds in the upper part of the canvas.

2016

35" x 30"
acrylic on canvas
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Spare Room is the most recent in a series of interiors which I have done over the last 3 or 4 years.  These images all begin with small drawings on paper in which I work out the formal aspects of composition.  This process may require as many as 6 or 7 drawings to reach the final version.  The title here is a double-entendre and leads one to think about the painting in two ways:  first, as a view of a room that is an extra room;  and second, as a view of a room that is spare....that is, sparsely furnished or bare of furnishings entirely. 

2016
acrylic on canvas
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These four paintings came from small drawings done after spending time in the southwestern U.S. during the winter of 2016.  I think of them as hybrid abstractions based upon memories of that area.

The drawings were not done on location, but came about later and I'm still doing paintings based on them and will probably continue to do so for some time to come.

2017
Acrylic On Paper

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These four are based on the same experience, but became smaller pieces done on paper and having a poster-like quality.  I have always had a deep admiration for posters from the 1930s, especially those from France in the Art Deco style.

2012
20" x 20"
acrylic on panel
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TREE-FORM ABLAZE is a painting which began as spontaneous marks and strokes without regard to meaning and then gradually evolved into a suggestion of the natural world and became tree-like.

2013
20" x 20"
acrylic on panel
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RETRO INTERIOR w/ FAKE KLINE came from a drawing I made years before which was essentially a doodle. It includes a not-so-subtle reference to Franz Kline’s work from 50’s and 60’s Abstract Expressionism and the current practice of some to market fake paintings on eBay. It’s also how I became so involved in painting imaginary interiors.

2015
31.5" x 27"
acrylic on canvas

SOLD

INTERIOR w/ A BREEZE is based on a drawing of an invented interior which includes some slightly surrealistic qualities as well.

acrylic on paper

These three paintings are from a recent series done on 260 lb. 100% rag paper and are meant to suggest unspecified desert settings.  

They come from various 5 x 7 color sketches that are very spontaneously made and subsequently enlarged to full size in the final work.  They are all untitled.

Painting 1 SOLD

Painting 2 SOLD

Painting 3 Inquire about price

32.75" x 26"
acrylic on canvas
SOLD

DINNER AT JACKIES (2015) is one of two paintings that grew out of a series of small drawings made while planning a commission for a friend.

2015
34.5" x 28.5"
acrylic on canvas
SOLD

URBAN SPAN started as a drawing from which this image was cropped. It is a very stylized city-scape with bridges and architectural forms.

2016
28.5" x 23"
acrylic on canvas
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INTERIOR w/ PAINTED TABLE is an imagined interior done while in the Phoenix area during a 2-month long winter escape last January and February. I often use images of windows and framed paintings together to suggest the notion that the two are the same thing and In fact serve the same purpose in a way.

This painting was exhibited in the 2016 Northern National Art Exhibition at Nicolette College in Rhineland, WI , an annual exhibition open to all artists in the U.S. 

2016
22" x 25"
acrylic on canvas
SOLD

STILL LIFE is a painting in which I unintentionally became engaged with transparency and reflection in a somewhat limited way.

2014
24" x 24"
acrylic on panel
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SELFIE is the result of realizing that one could make a wry point or criticism of the widespread practice of taking one’s own picture by doing a painting which does the same thing.

2012
20" x 20"
acrylic on panel
SOLD

Taos Catenary 2 comes from a series of semi-abstract drawings I did after a trip to the ancient Taos Pueblo in New Mexico in 2011.  The catenary is a type of arch and is very similar to the hornos (ovens) seen in Taos Pueblo that are used there to this day for cooking food.

2016
38" x 31"
acrylic on canvas
SOLD

Interior w/ a Mirror is an abstracted, shallow space interior which plays with certain ambiguities in what is, at first, seen as a 3-dimensional space and incorporates several small surprises for those who look for them.

2014
24" x 24"
acrylic on panel
SOLD

INTERIOR w/ PHONY ROTHKO is a recurring comment in my work about the practice of making and selling fake paintings.