Still Life
PROJECT

2019 & 2022, ongoing
painting installations dealing with children and violence

 
 

Still Life #2 for Uvalde  2022
Acrylic on canvas, mounted on board
19 at 12 x 9 inches

 

Still Life #2 is for the nineteen children who were shot and killed on May 24, 2022 at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas. In my research, I discovered that the children and their teachers were together that morning to see a movie after their end-of-school-year awards ceremony. They were watching Lilo and Stitch (2002) about a young girl in Hawaii who befriends and adopts an extraterrestrial she mistakes for a dog. These nineteen paintings are spirit creatures who will guide the children back to the last time they laughed.

 
Lynn Schuette Still Life 2019 Acrylic on canvas, mounted on board 30 pieces, 12 x 9 inches each Last spring I started to burn candles and pour the melted wax into water to create forms. This was born out of the frustration I felt about all of the memorials for too many mass shootings. Burning candles, flowers, notes, balloons all seemed heartfelt but beside the point. I thought a lot about how to translate the wax forms into paintings that say something, this is the result. Still Life is for the thirty children who were shot to death at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018 and Columbine High School in 1999, and the four related suicides, the two Florida children who killed themselves a year later and the two Colorado shooters.

Still Life  2019
Acrylic on canvas, mounted on board
30 at 12 x 9 inches

 

Last spring I started to burn candles and pour the melted wax into water to create forms. This was born out of the frustration I felt about all of the memorials for too many mass shootings. Burning candles, flowers, notes, balloons all seemed heartfelt but beside the point. I thought a lot about how to translate the wax forms into paintings that say something, this is the result. Still Life is for the thirty children who were shot to death at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in 2018 and Columbine High School in 1999, and the four related suicides, the two Florida children who killed themselves a year later and the two Colorado shooters.

Research and bibliography available.