Photos courtesy of Matthew Miller, Paul Thiebaud Gallery
Cornelia Schulz Synthesis at Paul Thiebaud Gallery
by Barbara Morris
San Francisco’s Paul Thiebaud Gallery presents Synthesis, a show of recent work by virtuoso painter Cornelia Schulz. While modest in scale, these works are expansive in energy, massing and bubbling under thick swaths of troweled-on paint. Schulz, with a BFA in painting and an MFA in welded steel sculpture—both from SFAI—has had an illustrious career as artist and educator. She has shown in major venues, received the prestigious SECA award, as well as pursuing a lengthy teaching career at UC Davis, among other institutions, from 1973 to 2002. Schulz chaired the Art Department at Davis from 1973 to 92, and again in 1995.
Schulz’s work has transcended boundaries to create objects one might view as painterly sculptures, or sculptural paintings. Here, Schulz works on unusual supports, compact, assertive forms which she constructs herself, this grouping of eleven works all using the shape of a rectangle as a point of departure. These are potent small paintings, ones in which the lengthy history of the bravura gesture is conveyed by sheer force of will. Formal elements combine and contrast, we witness an internal dialogue with Schulz displaying the blissful and/or excruciating interplay of gesture and decision making that is the working process of a painter.
Schulz’s remarkable show is presented in two upstairs galleries, the first room holding five small, irregularly-shaped works hung at eye level. No Laughing Matter (2023) features a base color of dark hues, black and violet, tinged with bright flecks and splotches of red, orange, and green. Some areas are scraped down close to the support, as others roil and coagulate, like flows of lava stopped in mid-stream. A wide, cream-colored band oozes from the upper-right corner, acquiring a corrugated appearance where the motion of a wide trowel/scraper was repeatedly disrupted. The lower half is punctuated by an incised band, glowing and juicy, as hair-like tendrils of paint twist and writhe under our gaze. Despite the intimate scale, there is nothing subdued about this work, which crackles with intensity, reflecting decades of experience handling paint, and a muscularity born of comfort in the creation and destruction of energies, a synthesis of opposing forces.
InterFray (2024) is a bit more subdued, almost demure, a wavy shape echoed in undulating paint, once again scraped with a wide tool into a colorful band with delicate stripes in warm, understated hues. Thick and sludgy encrustations in green and violet at the top disappear beneath this coating, the lower half emerging as a black surface disrupted here and there with bits of red and green, and trailing residue of the creamy surface above.
A back room features six more works by Schulz, along with an assortment of works by associates and colleagues from including her former husband, the late sculptor Robert Hudson, with whom she raised her family. The thickly-encrusted Ember (2024) continues in the palette of cream, green, red, and egg yolk yellow. It’s remarkable how powerful these small works are, with Schulz’s extensive experience as both painter and sculptor coming into play—the irregular shape of the supports sets us a bit off-kilter from the get go, and the wildly contrasting textures and energies, smooth, layered passages, cool geometric undergirding sharply incised lines, meet thrashed up messes of gooey and clotted shapes, their physicality reflecting the materials and processes that informed their construction. These works also have a seductive glimmer, a shiny, viscous appearance evoking an assortment of industrial materials (tar, grout) as well as biological fluids, such as the moist surface of a wet pink tongue suggested in the salmon color of Red Skirt (2022).
Red Ralley (2023), with its emphasis on verticality, also evokes a tradition of the sublime at odds with the intimate scale of the work. We may reflect on predecessors in this vein, with a lengthy trajectory ranging from Albert Bierstadt’s paintings of Yosemite through Clyfford Still’s abstract interpretations of man confronting the majesty of nature. Once again, we are presented with a seeming conundrum, with an expansive feeling of majestic scope, compressed into a tiny package. Another merging of opposites.
As art evolves, often away from the materials and processes that had defined it for centuries, we are often confronted with objects so anxious we may need a Paxil to enter the gallery. In this case, that expectation may be left at the door. These substantial pieces convey the best of 20th century painting practice, yet are very much of the moment. Here, like magic, the weighty history of painting is brought down to size, as Schulz posits that perhaps better doesn’t always have to mean bigger, the whole macho tradition of Abstract Expressionism defied by this intimate scale. For those who love paint, the mark of the brush, and the energy of the gesture, a visit to Paul Thiebaud will be richly rewarding.
Cornelia Schulz Synthesis on view at Paul Thiebaud Gallery through January 11, 2025.
hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am to 6 pm
please note gallery will be closed for the Winter Break from December 23 to January 6, 2025