ARTIST STATEMENT
Charlotte Schatz was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While at the Tyler School of Art she majored in Sculpture and created a series of multi-media geometric works which were well received by the administration and earned several awards. In 1973 she began teaching Sculpture and Design at Bucks County Community College and, after thirty years of teaching, she retired as Professor Emerita.
In the 1980’s Schatz returned to the easel. Her love of painting is ongoing. A socially conscious person, her work of the 70’s and 80’s often reflects her ideology. Another vein in her work has been an interest in architecture, including partial structures from the industrial era. This work has been described by Robin Rice as “…resurrected relics of power that have a new life in memory.” Her Urban Ruins Transformed series hearkens back to the colors of the Fauves and the mechanical subject matter of early Precisionists.
In 2004 Schatz won the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Award and in 2000, the Leeway Grant for Established Artists. Her work is represented in museums as well as in public and private collections across the United States, in France, and in Venezuela. She maintains a studio in Philadelphia and recently completed work on a large commission.
In her newest works Schatz is breaking away from ties to Realism. Looking to artists of 1900-1950 such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Jenkins, and Jasper Johns, she is engaged in a series of free form Non-Objective paintings, making room in her process for the accidental and the spontaneous. These works express a newly found delight in color, movement, and line.