This is the press release sent out by the State of the Art Gallery about my upcoming show:

Mary Schuler’s colorful, expressive paintings at State of the Art draw from issues we face at our time in history as well as the more timeless genre of landscape painting.  In her show titled “Emergence,” she links nature to civilization, the countryside to the city.  She says:  “Several paintings in the show suggest the implications of global climate change and natural disasters, and in others, the liberal application of paint and vivid use of color, texture, and abstraction, derive from a sense of place.   In contrast, subject matter in the simpler, more textured paintings, the sea, for example, with rolling waves, the sky and puffy clouds,  the splashy waterfalls,  seek  to evoke positive  emotions,  and to provide the viewer with something to feel and think about when looking at the work on the wall.

. . . about the slow physical disintegration of American cities and the grand exodus to the suburbs following World War II.   Cities shape our identity, our culture and civilization.   Our museums, city halls, post offices, department stores, architecturally- designed office buildings are among our best creative resources.

Cities are back!   It is predicted that by 2050, three-quarters of the world’s population will live in cities.   There has always been a tension between cities, as a source of creativity and wealth and the calming, restorative and sustaining essential support of resources required for human existence.   Looking forward, high-rise, affordable apartments, and  smaller living spaces using less energy will be the future, as people want to walk more,  drive less,  move away from shopping malls and return to urban areas.

Several of my paintings are meant to show unexpected destruction of urban and rural areas by natural disasters:  tsunamis, floods, earth quakes, volcanic eruption or global warming, I am painting these abstractions of cities and rural areas to raise awareness, to tap into our creative resources and to re-energize our creative spirits.