Zoe Pettijohn Schade

Born 1973 in Boston, Massachusetts
Lives and works in Watertown, Massachusetts

Schade’s ornate gouache paintings draw from sources as varied as eighteenth-century French fabrics, mathematical formulae, and color theory. Training herself in time-intensive processes such as gold leaf application, marbling, and miniature renderings, Schade’s works can take more than a year to complete. She identifies resonant combinations of images, drawing and then painting the forms in perpetual arrays, spreading out the individual elements and then bringing them closer together, until they appear to blur into pulsating, abstract patterns. Through the process of looking, repeated images become engrained in the viewer’s mind so that they dissolve into pure texture and yet seem to jump out of formation as the eye moves across the busy plane.

Pettijohn Schade earned her BFA from Cooper Union. She was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 2012. Her work has been exhibited nationally at Kai Matsumiya Gallery, New York, NY; Kenny Schachter Contemporary Gallery, New York, NY; and Jones Center for Contemporary Art, Austin, TX; and internationally at The Mona Bismarck American Center for Art Culture, Paris, France; Teckingmuseet, Lahol, Sweden; Salon Centro, Mexico City, Mexico; and the National Museum, Berlin, Germany.

More information on the artist:
https://zoepettijohnschade.com/