Jon Schueler

Jon Schueler, an American Abstract Expressionist painter, came to painting late in life, taking his first classes in Los Angeles after he had already married and begun a family. But under teachers Clyfford Still and Richard Diebenkorn at the California School of Fine Arts, he quickly discovered a talent and a love for painting that compelled him to move to New York, where he began to define and perfect his artistic vision.An early protégé of Leo Castelli, Schueler lived and worked among the...See more

Jon Schueler, an American Abstract Expressionist painter, came to painting late in life, taking his first classes in Los Angeles after he had already married and begun a family. But under teachers Clyfford Still and Richard Diebenkorn at the California School of Fine Arts, he quickly discovered a talent and a love for painting that compelled him to move to New York, where he began to define and perfect his artistic vision.An early protégé of Leo Castelli, Schueler lived and worked among the country's most gifted artists: Mark Rothko, Joan Mitchell, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning and many others. But when in the late 1950s nature became a stronger poetic force in his work, Schueler set off for Scotland. He discovered Mallaig, a town in the Western Highlands on the Sound of Sleat, where the dramatic landscape inspired his art and continued to influence him throughout his career.Over nearly thirty years, as he painted, Schueler worked on this book. In it, he struggled to uncover what it was that drove him to paint and wrestled with a conflict that confronts all artists-how to strike a balance between the need to create in solitude and the desire for human intimacy.JON SCHUELER grew up in Milwaukee and served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. In 1951 he moved to New York and from his base there he sojourned in Scotland, Paris, Italy, and at several universities in the United States. He died in 1992. See less