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| First Name | MAMIE LEE |
| Last Name | SCHATZ |
| Born | 1942-09-15 |
| Country | United States |
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| Biography | |
The daughter of a Georgia sharecropper/slave, Mamie Lee Schatz used a stick to draw simple geometric designs she ca11ed Love Knots in the sand when she was a young girl
In all my years, I have never forgotten my love knot, said Schatz, 63. The love knot was a design that folded into itself and showed the beginning and the end coming together I designed the love knot to illustrate the completeness of our lives and ambitions. The love knot is a symbol that applies to everything. For everything there is a completion.
About seven years ago, the self-taught artist began to paint seriously inspired by her love knots to explore geometric abstraction. She has made her debut as an artist with a show at the San Antonio Central Library Art Gallery.
With bright, bold primary colors, her geometric forms are mostly composed of straight lines, but the lines zig and zag in unexpected ways, creating optical illusions in her large scale canvases.
From my early experience, I gained the desire to find my place in the world, Schatz said. My place is the organization, structure, control and painting of large, colorful, geometric renditions.
One of eight children, Schatz remembers growing up in a close-knit family that worked the boss mans land near Jackson, a small town about 30 miles south of Atlanta. Her father, whom she adored, used to draw plans for houses, which she said strengthened her interest in geometric design.
I recall the many years our family worked from sunup to sundown in the heat of the Georgia sun, where water breaks were short and sweet, Schatz said. I remember the stillness of the night and the welcome rest from the daily labors. We slept on straw mattresses made by my mother.
There was no running water nor toilets nor even out-houses. Needless to say we lived quite primitive as compared to todays standards, but we survived and at times were a happy family of 10, as everyone knew their place and their responsibility to the familys well-being.
Although she always wanted to be an artist, she didnt have time to pursue it until she and her husband, Robert L. Schatz, decided to retire in San Antonio in 2000. She turned a room in their house into a studio.
I have about 200 magic markers that I use to plot out my work, Schatz said. I use straight edges and other drawing tools. Theres a large table constructed, I paint on, and I pull the canvas toward me as I paint each section. I like acrylics because they dry fast, but it generally takes me about three weeks to do each painting. I add layers and layers of paint to get the bold colors.
Home Run is one of her strongest compositions, featuring a wide brown line that runs through the other colors of the design, but with odd turns that make the line appear to ignore the laws of physics.
I began the painting with that line that represents my path through life and then added the other colors, Schatz said. I believe color is the key to human enjoyment of the variety of Gods being. Our humanity requires color to aid us in our efforts to differentiate the many styles and categories of beauty around us.
Rush features a series of descending diagonal lines that appear about to tumble out of the picture frame.
I was thinking about how to make it look like it was rushing, Schatz said. I thought about how my father used to stack planks so that they would slant downward. That just suggested a rushing motion to me.
In a pair of paintings titled United, she celebrates the union of man and woman, but in abstract forms. A jagged black line runs through one of the paintings, representing the male form. But in the second, she flipped the design to represent the feminine. She rarely uses representational forms.
Most of her paintings weave together straight lines and simple geometric forms such as rectangles, squares and the occasional circle, filled in with bright, brilliant colors. She signs her name to each painting, but she also includes a tiny life like rose. The rose came from my father, Schatz said. He always said that I should embrace life and people like a mixed bouquet of roses. |
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The daughter of a Georgia sharecropper/slave, Mamie Lee Schatz used a stick to draw simple geometric designs she ca11ed Love Knots in the sand when she was a young girl
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