The Art of Jasper Schmidt

Constraints aren’t Jasper’s problem. She’s dealt with limited space in her childhood and currently takes great advantage of her living room, packing and unpacking her supplies. As a third year student at Lakehead University in the visual arts program Jasper creates large works with expansive themes of home and place in colourful yet muted tones. Her paintings are currently on display at Espresso Joya at 8 Cumberland St. South.

     A major source of inspiration for Jasper are maps. Jasper employs these everyday functional tools in her paintings to cleverly suggest connections with the intimacies of home life. And not just her own home life, the paintings will soon become mapped portraits for others as well. Having taken on a commission she has found a unique way to generate an income.

     In her younger days, painting at home was too messy for Jasper’s family and she didn’t have a lot of room for it, but she organized with a closet dedicated to art supplies. Her painting journey really began at LU. Previously she had only worked with watercolours and fell in love with acrylics when she was first introduced to them. 

     Jasper’s desire to have the acrylics mimic watercolour effects rather than the plastic look acrylic can sometimes generate, lead her to work the acrylic into raw canvas. Priming a canvas with gesso makes the surface hard, smoother and more resilient. It’s not generally recommended to paint on raw canvas unless treated properly. Most of Jackson Pollack's paintings, worth millions of dollars, are falling apart. Museums and galleries spend millions on restoration, especially contemporary works of art as they contain the most volatile of materials often with no concern for the works longevity. In some museums you can actually see a line of paint dust on the floor beneath a Pollock due to the paint slowly disintegrating. 

    However, if done correctly with sealants and coloured gesso, watered down in order to keep the elasticity of the canvas, the benefits of painting into raw canvas can result in effects that are much harder to achieve with a completely primed canvas.

     “I’ve had quite the journey with painting,” states Jasper. “My beginnings weren’t very hands on.” She first took architecture at the University of Manitoba. “It really opened my eyes to what I really wanted to do. Ideally I would like a job that is very very hands on, whether working in wood – fine carpentry or furniture…. I found my niche in painting and along the way became interested in maps, personal maps, and map-like shapes that people might recognize… the tryptic [for instance] is all Canada.”

     This large triple painting and sectional “map” of Canada actually isn’t as jumbled as it looks. There was a lot of preplanning and projection involved. This tryptic inspired follow-up paintings where Jasper included significant places in her life which she highlighted; her childhood home, favourite lakes, babysitter’s house, friends homes, and more. So when you view the paintings you may now be aware of why it is you find her work somewhat familiar.
  Duncan Weller is a writer and illustrator of adult fiction and children's books. You can find them here.