'Talking Pictures: Camera-Phone Conversations Between Artists' will be open through December 17th, 2017.
What was life like growing up in Orange County?
Life was good. I describe the town I grew up in as a kind of blue-collar beach community—nice, sunny, and clean on the outside, with a dark, somewhat Lynchian underbelly. Drug trafficking out the back door of local businesses, hobos, drunks, and Nazi Surf Punks. Yes, that was a thing.
You were initially drawn to engineering and space—how did that interest evolve into a visual art practice?
There was a Navy base, and Boeing was there—previously McDonnell Douglas. Several of my friends' parents worked for these companies and/or lived on the Navy base. So, engineering, aerospace, and the military were always in my peripheral vision as something to do after school. There were always rumors floating around about secret advanced technology and bizarre aerial phenomena happening in the area where I grew up, so I naturally had a curiosity about what was going on.
Your work is deeply rooted in cosmic and celestial themes. When did this fascination begin for you?
I was always interested in the metaphysical from a very early age. When I finished art school in New York, I was in my studio experimenting with materials. Once I started to let go of what I was trying to do, I realized the material reacted in a certain way depending on the elements and gravity. The forms started to resemble surfaces of the Earth from an aerial perspective. When I switched to dye, I noticed the same type of reaction happening—the elements doing their thing—and the formations became a reflection of the opposite perspective. It was an "as above, so below" aha moment. That discovery laid the groundwork for pretty much everything that followed. Each painting still starts with the abstract process of laying down dye on raw canvas and allowing chance and nature to take part in the process with me. The fascination with celestial themes is an ongoing development—I don’t think it can ever be completely understood in a human lifetime. Once I started introducing figures into the paintings, it reinforced the concept that everything outside the human body exists inside as well. We’re all made of the same elements as our sun, just molecularly organized differently, so in a way, we’re all part of the same thing.
You’ve spoken about how travel has shaped your practice. Is there a particular place or experience that had a lasting impact on your artistic vision?
I think, in general, travel is paramount to my art because it informs and inspires things I normally wouldn’t think about or notice. Over the years, I’ve discovered many different methods, techniques, insights, ideas, and philosophies through travel.
What about a specific piece of art—has there been one that felt especially transformative? You know what?
I can’t say a specific piece of art was transformative per se, but once I saw Raymond Pettibon in the MoMA, I was hooked on art. Seeing his work in the museum made me believe that if he could do it, I could too.
How much of your creative process do you feel is driven by the subconscious? Do you actively try to tap into that space when creating?
Lately, almost everything I do is informed by the subconscious. I believe that this is our true self, and to create great art, you really have to know that part of yourself—and ask it what to do. Some intriguing characters appear in your work—who are they?! Most of the characters are people I know or have known over the years. Sometimes, I incorporate contemporary cartoons that shaped my consciousness as a child.
Any recent moments of insight or "enlightenment"?
Every day, I try to have a moment of insight or enlightenment. From my experience, the way to channel that information is by being open to it and trying not to think too much. Everyone is born with a creative spark—it’s just a matter of being aware of it and listening to it.
How has your personal style evolved over the years?
When I was younger, I was really inspired by people who just looked different. I was adopted, and my parents were pretty conventional, so when I saw punks on the street or on TV, I was always curious about counterculture and underground movements. As I grew older, music and art influenced my style and attitude, and I started opening up to different ideas, philosophies, and genres of music and art. All of these things have shaped my current style—artistically and otherwise.
Looking ahead, are there any new concepts or mediums you’re excited to experiment with?
Right now, I’m working on a podcast with my friend Jesse Camp, where we interview other artists while I paint their portraits. We’ve just finished filming the first few episodes and are now editing them. His brand of comedy meshes well with the core theme of the show—how art and spirituality are synonymous, rooted in the idea that the artist is a conduit for spiritual manifestation. The podcast is called Art Show. I think film is the medium of today’s age with the greatest potential to influence people.
What’s playing in the studio right now?
Blur. Is Costa Mesa calling? Always!
(Photo by Robin Hart Alexander)
A self-taught painter, Schneiderman likes to embrace the spontaneous interplay of materials. “The dyes create a pattern or an idea that I can later dissect or intervene with a brush,” Schneiderman tells Office in a recent interview. Plant dyes, which he encountered while working in a Denver boutique, introduce an element of chance into the process. Images and ideas often germinate organically, as Schneiderman’s materials mirror his own physical and emotional landscapes.
Contrary to the title’s implied minimalism, The Big Empty—a phrase borrowed from the country singer Coulter Wall—is activated by a potent kinetic charge. Some of the show’s paintings were made in a small Los Angeles garage before Schneiderman relocated to a larger space downtown. The frenetic energy reflects the cramped nature of the studio he was working in. Limited room and constant movement infused the pieces with urgency and tension, as if the paintings were pushing against walls.
“I like to lay out all the paintings in my studio and see how they vibrate, how they talk to each other,” Schneiderman says. He prefers working on multiple pieces at a time to capture this emanating dialogue. His canvases are linked by a subconscious symbiosis, a quality that has attracted viewers seeking a harmonious connectivity with art. During the pandemic, Schneiderman’s work swiftly gained an online following; his paintings serve as portals into a shared space of introspection.
“A feedback loop starts to occur, and I start to notice how one painting might influence or inform another, ” the artist adds. Familiar shapes and patterns—concentric circles, opaque nebulae, and flexuous earthworm-like squiggles—recur across the canvases, contributing to a visual ecosystem fueled by a cross-pollination of ideas. Each painting is its own ethereal landscape of ecstatic forms, evoking cosmic explosions (How the Heart Unfolds), desert storms (Playing the Bones), lightning sprites (Visitor Map), and molecular fusion (Dweller on the Threshold). Schneiderman also had David Lynch’s catchphrase “Catching the big fish” in mind while painting The Miraculous Draft of Fishes, inspired by the director’s idea of meditation as a means to deeper creative expression.
The large-scale canvases reflect a conceptual evolution for the artist, who has more recently shown in Italy and Switzerland. “Abstraction has always been a destination I’d wanted to arrive at,” Schneiderman says, “but I had to chisel away at my instinct to make references to get there.” There is an apparitional quality to a work like The Magician, which alludes to a figure hidden from view. Remnants of these specters haunt the canvases—a fishing net, a disembodied ear, a snow-covered forest—but Schneiderman’s interest lies beyond the recognizable. His works are imbued with a latent spirituality that bridges the ecological and the transcendental.
“I think about ‘the big empty’ as this location or headspace, a kind of collective unconsciousness, where ideas exist and are exchanged,” he says. The painter, then, is like a medium, divining vibrant, imaginative visions from plant matter and pigment.
You said you first started painting at like 35. Do you remember why you started? What was it that led to you first picking up a brush?
I started painting because life, in all its twists and turns, finally pushed me toward it. I think it had been waiting for me all along. There wasn’t some grand epiphany — more like a quiet, persistent whisper that I had ignored for too long. One day, I just listened. My ex-girlfriend handed me a brush, I picked it up, and at that moment, it felt like I had been holding it my whole life without realizing it.
Did you instantly think, ‘Oh shit, I’m good’, or was there a big learning curve?
Oh, I definitely didn’t think I was a prodigy right out the gate. But I felt something — like I had found a language that had been buried in me. The technique, the discipline, those came with time. But the feeling? That was instant. It was like discovering a door I never knew existed and realizing that on the other side was every piece of myself I had ever lost.
How did you look at painting when you first started? Was it like a hobby, a spiritual or mental release? Or was it a serious career choice?
At first, it was survival. Not in the financial sense, but in the sense that I needed it to feel alive. It was a return to myself, a place where my mind could breathe. I didn’t think about careers or collectors or exhibits. I just thought about what it meant to create something that felt honest.
It sounds like your life before painting was totally different from what you're doing now. Do you think the things you were doing then shape your work now? Or does it feel like two very separate lives?
They are the same life. Everything I was before is still in my work — it just took on a different form. The lessons, the struggles, the joys — they all seep into the canvas whether I plan for it or not. I think life always finds a way to speak, even if you change the language.
You have a series of paintings titled, ‘Loverboy'. Who is Loverboy? Tell me about him.
Loverboy is an echo of every love I’ve known, every love I’ve lost, and every love I’m still learning to understand. He is tender but reckless, hopeful but bruised. He wears his heart on his sleeve even when he knows it might get torn. He is me, and he is you. He is anyone who has ever loved with their whole being, even when it hurt.
If you were a color, what color would you be?
I’d be the color of dusk — the deep blues, the fleeting pinks, the quiet purples. The in-between of day and night, when the world is both ending and beginning.
What about if you were a medium?
If I were a medium, I’d be water. Something that moves, adapts, carves its own way over time. Something that can be both soft and unstoppable.
Where or when do you feel most creative?
When the world is quiet, and I can hear my own thoughts without interruption. Sometimes that’s late at night, sometimes it’s in the middle of a crowded street when I see something that sparks something in me. Creativity isn’t a scheduled guest — it arrives when it pleases, and I just try to be ready for it.
I’m curious about you designing all of your own clothes and jewelry. When and why did that start?
It started the same way all of my art does — with a need to see something that didn’t exist yet. I wanted to wear something that felt like me, like my paintings, like my poetry. I wanted to carry my art not just on canvas but on my body. So I started making things. And once you start, it’s hard to stop.
You also create sculptures, poems, and probably a lot more that I’m not aware of. Where do you think this need to create comes from?
From the need to translate life. Some people write it down in journals, some people sing it. I paint it, sculpt it, stitch it into fabric, shape it into words. It’s all the same thing — just different ways of making sense of the world and my place in it.
Before you get to painting, you always start with a poem. How does that transform from words to a physical piece?
The poem is the seed. The painting is what grows from it. I write until I reach a feeling that can’t be contained in words alone, and then I move to the canvas. The two aren’t separate — they are just different parts of the same conversation.
What emotions do your paintings evoke in yourself?
It depends on the piece. Some paintings are like exhaling — relief, release. Some are like a wound — raw, exposing. But all of them feel like truth. And truth, no matter how it looks, always feels like home.
What do you think, or hope, they evoke in your audience?
Whatever they need to feel. I never want to dictate that. If a piece makes someone feel seen, that’s enough. If it stirs something they can’t name, that’s enough too. Art is a mirror — we all see what we need to see.
What are you manifesting right now?
More life, more love, more creation. The freedom to keep exploring, to keep making, to keep feeling. And for whatever is meant for me to find its way home.
