Phyllis Schaeffer Lecture

Phyllis Schaeffer Lecture Phyllis Schaeffer was a very inspirational artist and speaker for me because she was able to show me how subjective to change a person’s style of art can be throughout their lifetime. She began her lecture introducing herself and followed that with just little facts about her life. She is originally from the east coast and then eventually moved down to California. Each of her locations of living was a huge aspect in terms of her artistic style based on her influences. Phyllis began her artistic lifestyle by painting a lot of surrealist pieces that provoke a lot of thought. The use of landscape and outside surroundings are usually her primary motivation and influence for her work, no matter where her living locations were. For a while she lived in Oakland and still partially painted surrealist works over there but more influenced by the landscape than her early works. Later she moved down to Berkley and taught art in the bay area there. She received her MFA in Berkley, which they were adamant to give to her because of her strange artistic style. Later in her life she was invited to teach art history at TMCC in Tahoe, and on a whim, moved there to start a new lifestyle. She eventually realized how much she loved the Tahoe and mountain landscapes, and started from there to work on her current style of art. She usually goes out to different spots throughout that area, and pins down her canvas in the middle of the wilderness and then paints as much as she can to represent the exact landscape that is in front of her. After that, she takes her pieces home and works on them and tweaks them to give off her style and abstractness to each of her works. My favorite piece of hers that she presented during her lecture was “Echo Lake”, which, as ordinary as it sounds, is her style of painting the landscape of Echo Lake. I thoroughly enjoyed her lecture and thought she was a very inspirational woman and have immediately taken an interest to her works of art.