Richard Schmid

Though Richard Schmid (1934-2021) freely owned borrowing techniques from Impressionism in his more youthful paintings, in his own assessment of a career that spanned over two centuries and six decades, he wryly surmised: “If there’s a technique, it would be excellence.” 

Born in Chicago to a father who initially doubted his aspirations (that is, until he brought a painting in to show his boss who purchased it on the spot), Schmid started taking serious art lessons by age twelve, eventually finding himself at the American Academy of Art in Chicago under the guidance of William Mosby, a portraitist and realist. While Schmid maintained a firm commitment to realism, he had no qualms about lightly stretching the truth for the sake of expressiveness. As opposed to portraits, which he felt demanded a greater fidelity, he said of his other genre of expertise: “You can get away with murder in a landscape.” 

Schmid’s prolific output led to over fifty solo shows over the course of his life, and received the John Singer Sargent Medal for Lifetime Achievement. He married a fellow artist, Nancy Guzik, and while the couple lived in Colorado and later New England they founded collectives for like-minded artists who, despite not having any formal lessons or curriculum, fondly referred to Schmid as “the Maestro.” Schmid was ever eager to share his learned and earned wisdom, writing several books on the art of being an artist. On that topic he was clear: “I never ‘became’ an artist. I was an artist from the beginning.”