MUNTHE ART MONDAY:
Petra Schott

Please introduce yourself and tell us about what you do.

My name is Petra Schott. I am painter based in Frankfurt, Germany, whose work moves between abstraction and figuration. My preferred medium is oil paint because of its natural quality, the richness of its colors, and its wonderful texture. I love working on a large scale canvas, creating spaces that invite viewers to immerse themselves and lose themselves in the painting.

Petra is wearing our VIRIONICS OUTERWEAR.

Can you name some other female (artist) that inspires you and explain why they do so?

There are many female artists who have impressed and influenced me. Tracey Emin inspires me with her uncompromising honesty with which she transforms every aspect of her life into art. She shows all her vulnerability, crises and tears and touches me deeply.

I love Cecily Brown for the extraordinary way she brings figuration and abstraction together, creating something that feels both old-masterly and utterly contemporary. Her paintings invite on a journey of discovery; they are worlds in themselves, worlds you can immerse yourself in more and more deeply.

Rita Ackermann, for me, is an artist who constantly reinvents herself, while also exploring boundaries between figuration and abstraction that fascinate me so much.

I love Catherine Goodman for the richness and intensity of her color and for the sheer physicality of her oil paintings, which I find simply breathtaking.

And there are so many others…

What would you like people to notice in your artwork?

I love working on large scale canvasses because a large painting allows you to truly immerse yourself in it and enter another world. Through my work, I want to offer viewers this sense of an immediate experience—one that begins before words and verbal expression.

I believe that when we encounter an abstract painting, are drawn it and allow ourselves to respond to it spontaneously, there is always an element of surprise. We may not be able to explain exactly why a particular image speaks to us. It is precisely this moment that I hope to evoke in the viewer.

My works do not reveal themselves at first glance; they need time to unfold and take effect. Different layers are often interwoven: a linguistic layer, in which fragments of words or phrases appear; painterly layers, experienced through colour; and, at times, figurative elements that might suggest a story or narrative.

I would like viewers to sense the freedom and sensitivity that are embedded in the work, while remaining free to discover their own way into it. I love what curator Nell Cardozo wrote about my work: “There is a generous intimacy in Schott’s use of color that coaxes out a subtle interplay between comfort and longing. Looking into them is like looking into a dream that belongs to some common consciousness.

Could you explain more about how being a woman has affected your career?

Being a woman has influenced my career in many ways. In fact, I had two careers, one as a lawyer and one as a painter. I began painting while I was preparing for my final law exams. I needed a counterbalance to the intellectual world of concepts, theories, and cases. After completing my law degree, I went on to study Fine Art, although I did not pursue a degree. For many years afterwards, I worked as a lawyer and judge and in my free time also refined my expression as a painter and took part in exhibitions.

In the 1980s, it was still far from a given that all men were willing to work with women as equals in the field of law. And it was a male dominated field. But a lot has changed since then. When I left the legal profession in 2014, I started painting full-time and I began to explore my identity as a woman much more deeply and free.

I believe that female painters are still met with a certain degree of mistrust, particularly when they refuse to conform to established rules and academic concepts, and when their work is guided less by preconceived ideas than by the unconscious and the intuitive.

In my paintings, among others I explore the question of where my own self begins, and where I am acting out things I have inherited, absorbed, or learned without even being aware of them. Who am I and what is my own understanding of femininity?

For some time, I explored Bob Dylan’s song “Just Like a Woman” through my paintings. It became another opportunity for me to discover my own painterly expression of femininity. The goddess Venus has similarly inspired me to reflect on what it means to be a woman. Must she not grow tired of forever having to represent love, Eros, and beauty? In my paintings, I have played with the idea that even Venus might need a holiday from her duties as a goddess.

Petra is wearing our OBEY DENIM PANTS, VOVILLA KNIT and VIRIONICS OUTERWEAR.

What has been the most challenging aspect of being a woman in the arts?

I started working full-time as an artist in 2014. I think one of the biggest challenges in the beginning was simply believing in myself and finding the confidence to develop my own artistic language with outmost consequence. And then, of course, there was the question of visibility. I had moved to a new city where I didn’t know anyone, so I had no network and no real connections in the art world.

I was very fortunate that my Instagram account started during the pandemic grew quite quickly. It opened a lot of doors for me and helped me connect with people I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise.

One of the first galleries to offer me representation was Tappan Collective in Los Angeles, which is a female-led gallery. That was incredibly fortunate for me because they have a large network of collectors and a very strong presence in the art world.

I think one of the difficulties, especially in Germany, is that many galleries tend to look for young female artists who have graduated from prestigious art schools. It can be much harder to find a place in that system when you’re an older female artist like me and have taken a different path.

Of course, many artists choose to promote and sell their work themselves, but I always knew that I wanted to be involved in that side of things as little as possible. What I really wanted was to paint without too much administrative burden.

Over the past few years, I’ve been lucky enough to find a balance that works very well for me. I now work with several galleries—including one in Denmark—that take care of much of the promotion and sales. That gives me the freedom and the space to concentrate on what I really want to do, which is simply to paint.