At left, "Broken Top" by Hans Schiebold. Like the other Schiebold works shown here (not seen in the original article) it is a link to the Hummingbird Gallery website. 

Here, the mountain in the distance, I stand and trace the outline of the clouds as they break against the peak. Familiar to me, the truncated volcanic cone fairly shouts its name in the autumn air. 

“Broken top,” echoes from the three peaks to the right. A biting fall wind sends wisps of clouds scudding along the screen that marks the base of the peak. Midway to the top, a snowfield catches the wind, hurling it back in an edgy reminder that it is fall, and soon the scrubby Juniper and Alpine Fir that line the foot of the mountain will be covered, inexorably, in the same white cloak that now creeps down the rocky peak. 

The scene seems abstract, somehow, and more distant than my sight says. The trees, malformed and gnarled, are not quite clear, and the clouds have hues that, while wonderful, are not at all cloud-like. Standing here in the Lawrence Gallery in the Pearl District of Portland, I am transported to this favorite Cascade peak, yet not quite. Feeling the rush of the season, sensing  that this is perhaps the best of his paintings that I have seen, I know that my years of watching the work of Hans Schiebold, a renowned Northwest painter with Cannon Beach connections, have come full circle. Today, with this wonderful diptych titled “Surrounding Broken Top,” I convert from “observer” to “owner.” 

Schiebold was born in Freiberg, Germany. He came to the United States to study at Hartford  University Art School in Hartford, Conn., and received his Master of Fine Arts in 1970. He then became professor of fine arts at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where he taught from 1970 until 1978. 

During this period, Schiebold was active in the New York abstract art scene of the 1970s, and his paintings were displayed in many major museums on the east coast. In addition, they were featured in several international museum shows. In 1978, he accepted a position as professor of art at Wichita University, in Kansas, which he held until 1982, when he moved to Portland, where he first began to use the landscape form to move from abstract painting to a more representational mode.

Perhaps it was the abundance of natural beauty in the Northwest that lured Hans to paint landscapes. Among his works are beach scenes, mountain views, canyon paintings, desert scapes, and a welter of other natural subjects.  Schiebold has done various series on the deserts of the West, as well as series on rivers,  canyons and the Cascade mountains. Schiebold is drawn to the vastness of the natural scene, a fact that is reflected in the large size of most of his paintings.

“A painting should dominate a room,” Hans says, and proceeds to dictate that in the size and technical uniqueness that marks him as an artist. 

Schiebold has lived in the Northwest since 1982, splitting his time between a home in Tigard and Falcon Cove, just south of Cannon Beach. Schiebold maintains studios in both homes, providing his growing clientele with canvases that average five feet in width and four feet in height. 

Why did he come to Oregon, and, more specifically, why the coast? 

“I loved it; I simply loved it. I lived in Kansas for four years, and there was a little too much Kansas there,” he noted with a chuckle. 

Schiebold is especially attached to the area around Cannon Beach, where he exhibits in the  Bronze Coast Gallery, owned by Kim Barnett. Hans has high praise for Barnett, citing his sensitivity and fairness with artists. The coast itself offers Schiebold an opportunity to explore his love of landscape art.

“When we moved out here in 1982, I simply fell in love with the Northwest.” 

One result of the move was a change to more representational landscapes, as opposed to the more stylized work he had previously done. “By that time,” Hans says, “abstract painting had pretty well said all it could say.” The Northwest offered him an opportunity to develop a more representational style and ample subject matter, and he has thrived. “They know me here,” Hans says, “They know my work.” For him, landscape art was a rediscovery of something that lay within, “a rediscovery of a dormancy,” as he puts it.

Early Abstract Work

The highly textured technique that Schiebold now uses was not always part of his métier. Some of Schiebold’s early work was flat. Color-layering, however, was clearly present, a technique that would later lead to the accretive process of his landscapes and abstracts. In this earlier color-layering, a difficult process of applying acrylic base color veils with an atomizer to create over-all patterns. A color-bleeding effect was achieved from thinned liquid soap 

Some of Schiebold’s early works were experiments in graphite, texturized in ways that foreshadow his later technique. In these, Schiebold begins to layer his materials more deeply, creating a patchwork of reflective surfaces that catch and break the light in patterns at once pleasant and provocative. Black on black is merely the absence of color, until it is texturized.   The surface of these graphite paintings were often broken into squares, which were tilted at varying angles to catch the ambient light and reflect it in a multitude of angles. Thus, the broken surfaces of these graphites create an interplay of gold and silver that melds in a wonderful vermeil aura. This is not simply painting; it is controlled handling of the medium with the full realization of what light will do to bring the work to fruition. 

“Texture” is an inescapable word in discussing Schiebold’s work. Schiebold does not “paint,” he sculpts in media on canvas. Indeed “texture” in Schiebold’s work is stretched almost to a breaking point, so layered and worked are his landscapes. His process is not unlike carving away the applied medium, leaving only what is essential to make the statement he sees in the scene before him. He says as much himself: “The ‘how’ of painting is more important than the ‘what’.” 

Pursuing that “how” has caused Schiebold to collect a wide array of implements for creating texture. Schiebold uses no brushes in his work. A look at his work area reveals palette knives, spatulas, hand-shaped metal tools, sponges, nets, patterned rollers, almost anything that will create a specific pattern or texture in the work at hand. Yet, his completed works show only the effects of “taking away” what does not belong, in order for the subject to emerge. At times, in fact, that subject seems more implied that stated, a residue from his abstract days, perhaps. His landscapes have a sense of mystery but are clearly recognizable: Indian Beach; Mt. Hood; the Columbia Gorge; Hells Canyon; and a wide array of Northwest spots that form the nexus of his interests. Ask him for a favorite spot, and he will defer answering, perhaps because the process of landscaping is more important to him than the specific venue.

Simply put, Schiebold is a representational artist, insofar as he deals in landscapes. Why landscapes? “Why not?” is his retort. “Is an apple more important than an orange; than a tree; than an eagle; than a fish or deer?” He answers his own rhetorical question, “It is all important or not; it simply is.”

But “simply is” should not be construed to mean “Is simple,” for Scheibold’s work is the culmination of much thought, the result of a lifetime of searching. That searching leads Schiebold to say that art is like religion: “It functions exactly like a philosophical system.” If so, then the concept of “right” is not part of that system. “We are searching for something. We do not produce answers; we do not reach conclusions.” Ironically, Schiebold notes, “Right” is a concept that “has caused wars in both art and religion.”

Is that why Schiebold has chosen to paint landscapes, rather than to tussle with the ambiguities of abstract art? Probably not, because the earliest of his oeuvre contains a wide body of abstractions and experiments in technique, as well as color. “I have chosen landscapes, and I am comfortable,” Schiebold says. “These are landscapes, but they are very process oriented.”

The word “process” again, creeping into his discussions almost unconsciously. “I got tired of explaining my art. At least now with landscapes, I don’t have to explain my art any more.” That comment, delivered in an almost throwaway tone, belies the techniques, if not the content, of his landscapes. Schiebold might have added, “Most people think they understand landscapes,” but he did not.

For Schiebold’s landscapes are not clean-lined representational art, as it is traditionally thought of. An undeniable quality of the abstract artist shows through in Schiebold’s landscapes. The colors are often “messy” as he terms them; the forms are not clean-lined, but fuzzy for effect; a few strokes often serve to define an entire tree, a line of bushes, or a “feel of the season.”  Though the style is unique—the defining identity for every artist—the subject is invariably accessible. Schiebold says, “Everyone who reacts to art can be a critic.” In this respect, each of  Schiebold’s works seems greater than the sum of its parts. Ultimately, the abstractness is resolved into a beach, a waterfall, a mountain, or a river. 

Each work, finally, is a matter of perspective. “Seen close up, the mudpots in Yellowstone Park  are abstractions. Step back, and they are part of a wonderful scene,” he says. Seen close up,  Schiebold’s works are color patches in search of a meaning. Step back, and they resolve into provocative renderings of favorite Northwest scenes. Indeed, most of Schiebold’s works are large, requiring some space for appreciation. “A painting should dominate a room,” according to Schiebold, a conviction he practices in almost every one of his paintings. The diptych I purchased from the Lawrence Gallery, for instance, is ten feet wide and five feet high, totally dominating the room in which I placed it. 

The combination of color, texture and size create a style uniquely Schiebold’s. In this, Schiebold takes comfort, because “style” is precisely what an artist pursues all his life. “If you are not mastering a technique, you are not painting,” he says. Schiebold has been commissioned to repeat the same scene many times: Hells Canyon, specific mountains in the Cascades, and so on. Does repetition bring boredom to the artist, so that it overcomes his creative energy? “It (repetition) is a problem,” says Schiebold, “but that is how you know an artist’s style.” It is precisely that repetition, that diverse sameness, which distinguishes one mature artist from another. 

“Every painting is different, but the style is inescapable,” says Schiebold. “Any artist can be identified by his technique. This is who we are and this is basically what we are striving for.” It is like a person’s signature, he says, just like a person’s signature. Schiebold’s paintings are like a signature, just as surely as the almost redundant “hbold” painted into the lower corner of each work. 

Schiebold has a deep appreciation for the public function of art. Having a following is, in this sense, extremely important, because it verifies the artist and his work. That art, in fact, performs the work of communication, confirming that the artist has made contact with society in a meaningful and constructive way.

This attitude, much more than his technique, makes Schiebold a traditionalist at heart. “I was an apprentice in Germany in decorative ceiling and wall art,” Hans explains. “But my pieces are not  decorative.” He hastens to explain: “Decorative means essentially flat, repetitive, uncomplex, and boring.” He is not demeaning decorative arts by saying this, merely distinguishing them from other artistic achievement. “Variation and emphasis bring art,” he explains, noting that these come only after much seeking and experimentation. It is an essential difference between “object”  and “style.” 

Schiebold the teacher emerges in conversations about art and art history. “In Gothic times,” he says, “cathedrals were the highest form of art, and they were public. Art was didactic, and the service of society was important, because art was the only visual stimulus.” Now, with many  alternative forms of visual stimuli, art is being pushed into the background, “almost a private dogma,” he says, meaning that art has assumed something of an elitist status. “Contemporary art  is dogmatic to the point of exclusion,” Hans says, “it needs to loosen up and have a little fun.”

Article text © 2003  Cannon Beach Gazette