Artist Insights: Petra Schott

In this Artists Insights film, German artist Petra Schott visits the Jackson’s Studio to discuss how she uses the unconscious in her freestyle abstract paintings, why it is sometimes necessary to ‘kill your darlings’ to move forward in your work, and her deep love of oils and oil sticks.

0:00 “Painting is one way to explore the unconscious”

0:38 Introduction

1:00 “My wish was to be a psychoanalyst”

1:42 “People ask me “how I could move from law to painting”

3:49 “Art school taught me how to go deeper”

4:19 “My work is always a mixture of figurative and abstract”

4:52 “You can put more emotion into abstract painting”

5:17 “My theme is my life”

6:17 “I can’t limit a painting to what my original intention was”

7:00 “Sometimes I start painting blindly with my left hand”

7:44 “I use brushes and my fingers”

8:37 “My scribbles are not always meant to be readable”

9:17 “I love painting on raw canvas”

10:09 “Kill your darlings”

11:23 “I love the finesse of Cy Twombly”

12:46 “I mostly use oil paints for their texture and saturation”

14:54 “Oil sticks give an extra touch to a painting”

15:36 “I never work on a desk”

17:20 “If I can’t get in the right mood, I put music on and dance”

17:56 “If I feel a painting is going wrong, I let it rest until it calls me”

19:07 “I always work on several paintings”

20:14 “I have no painting left untitled”

21:52 “Be present in your inner space”

22:29 Credits

Extract

I think, for me, painting is one way to explore the unconscious. My painting just tries to engage my right hemisphere, so the other world, which is unconscious. I want to let it free somehow. I want to develop it on the canvas and see what comes out. And for me, this is still very exciting.

People ask me, ‘How could you move from law to painting?’ It happened in my first law exam when I was studying in Germany. I was exhausted and it was a very stressful time. For this first law exam, you work, you work, you come home in the evening, and you’re totally exhausted in your mind. You’re stuck.

Venus Garden VI
Petra Schott
Oil on canvas, 180 x 180 cm | 70.7 x 70.7 in

And then I thought, what can I do now? I didn’t want to move. I felt just exhausted. And then I rediscovered an old gift from a friend. It was a watercolour set. And I said to myself, that could be something. You can just sit down, do something with your hands without thinking, and just use your other hemisphere.

And from that moment on, I just painted what I saw. It was so relaxing and so comforting. I started copying other painters, like Paul Klee and August Macke. I did this for some time. I had taken such an interest in developing my art further that I felt it was now or never in a way. After my second law exam, I applied to this academy, and I thought ‘I’m accepted, it is a sign that I should pursue it.’ I applied and I was amazed because I was older than most of the students at the time, but I was accepted. I was very proud, of course.

Venus Garden IX, 2024
Petra Schott
Oil on canvas, 130 x 110 cm | 51.2 x 43.3 in

What art school showed me was to go deeper, to have a clear structure with what I want to do, and to use different materials and different forms of expressing something. To choose a subject and work on it for half a year or one semester in different techniques. This was really good and helped me to go on later. I worked figuratively in the beginning for quite some time and I would work more abstractly, and then I would return to figurative. It was a mixture of both, so I called it ‘figurative abstract’. And it still is. I have periods where you can recognise forms, bodies, and human beings in my paintings. It is always a mixture. I’m not totally abstract.

Venus Garden X, 2024
Petra Schott
Oil on canvas, 100 x 140 cm | 39.4 x 55.1 in

My work has developed more and more towards abstract painting. The interesting thing about abstract art is that you can put more emotion into it than figurative painting. The more you withdraw from the exact shapes of what you see, the more you can give it your own value and introduce it to your own world.

My theme is my life. It may sound a bit funny, but it is true. I try to incorporate everything I go through into my paintings. It might be something beautiful, like a summer day. It might be something heavier, like something happening in my private life, a death, or an illness. Or it may be about something beautiful that I’ve read. I love the poems of Mary Oliver. My work is also centered around being a woman, of course. In my paintings, you will vaguely see human figures and often female bodies. Then it’s nature. I love to walk in nature, which I do once a week. I think the colours of the seasons appear in my paintings.

We Danced
Petra Schott
170 x 150 cm | 66.9 x 59 in

I often work in series, but it’s not something I plan. I never know at the start if a work will develop into a series or just be a single painting. Sometimes I get these wonderful ideas, but they are so wonderful that I can’t capture them in my paintings. If I do so, I’m so fixed on this idea that the painting is useless – it’s nothing. I have to leave it open, start again, and see what happens. I react to what happens on the canvas and have the painting develop in a free way, without limiting it to my original intentions.

Summer Garden IX, 2024
Petra Schott
Oil on canvas, 100 x 80 cm | 39.4 x 31.5 in

Sometimes I start painting blindly. I close my eyes and just take a little pencil and then I would draw on the canvas and see what happens. I also do this with my left hand. I’m right-handed, but I like to do it with my left because the drawing gets more lively and is directed from the right hemisphere, which is the more intuitive side of my person. I like to use that side and I’m always really surprised. I find that drawings get better when you do it with a left hand and then they are more lively, the speech of this drawing is more direct.

I like to scribble into my paintings, but the scribblings are not always meant to be readable by a viewer later. I listen to music very often when I’m in my studio and sometimes I just scribble something into the painting; the text of the song appears, or a line of a poem I remember. I also love the graphic character of writing. I think it’s very different from brushwork. So I like the fine lines and it opens a different world for me.

Venus: Make Me My True Self, Make Me Myself, 2023
Petra Schott
Oil on canvas, 140 x 140 cm | 55.1 x 55.1 in

At the beginning of this year, I once again started to paint on raw canvas. And I must say I love it. Somehow it’s more strenuous because the raw canvas soaks up more of the colour and you have to go over it more and more. But I love the results. And I find the results so different from primed canvas that I think it’s a different way to paint. I want to explore this further.

I have also started to use more scribbling and charcoal in my paintings. I find that exciting. I mean, sometimes it’s just something a new medium can open up – a whole painting world. So I want to incorporate these scribblings, these drawings with charcoal or with pencil or so more into my paintings.

Her Dance
Petra Schott
Oil and charcoal on raw canvas, 150 x 150 cm | 59 x 59 in

Painters I really love. Cy Twombly is one of them, certainly. I’ve been fascinated with him since I can remember when I got interested in abstract painting. I love the finesse of his works and of course the scribblings and also the intensity. I still don’t know how he achieves this intensity in his paintings, though they are so loose. For me it’s fascinating. I also love Joan Mitchell for her use of colour and bold brushstrokes. I love Tracey Emin – I got to know her at the Biennale in Venice. And I was really fascinated. From then on I’ve followed her work. She’s so open and honest with her life and with her emotions. I adore that. I must say she’s also a continuous inspiration for me. These are all painters when I feel I don’t know how to go on, I look at their works. Also, Instagram is a source of permanent inspiration. It’s like going through a continuous museum of modern art in a way.

I mostly use oil paints. I have also used other mediums like acrylic colours and also egg tempera for some years. But I think it’s the oil colours which I like best. It’s because of the texture and I think oil colors have the most natural tone, and most natural hues.

I think acrylic sometimes can look a little bit artificial, also a bit dead in a way. And for some ways of painting, this is of no interest. It’s fine. But for my way of painting, I like a saturated look. I like the full colour and the texture, and applying layer upon layer, which is also a specialty of oil. You can even put light colours on dark colours, which is difficult with acrylics in my experience and with egg tempera too. So in a way, with oil, you can also go over your mistakes. You can change your painting without it getting a somehow dead or too closed look. So I like all the possibilities which are open with oil and I like the splendid colours which you can buy nowadays.

Vulnerability, 2023
Petra Schott
Oil on canvas, 140 x 140 cm | 55.1 x 55.1 in

I have used other mediums. At one time I used egg tempera because I enjoyed the process of making it. I mean you use an egg, you use oil, you use water and this is your sort of source, your medium. And then you add the pigments, the powder basically. So it’s a very easy way of getting your own colours. But the colours are a bit more, I would say, subdued. To achieve a luminous colour, this is more difficult with egg tempera. But it’s also a very natural colour that you can see and feel. So I liked that about egg tempera painting.

I also use oil sticks. Yeah, they are beautiful, oil sticks. I don’t want to promote certain oil sticks here, but they are lovely. So highly pigmented that they give an extra touch to a painting. So I love red as an oil stick, for instance, really this intense red. It always gives a certain serenity to a colour if you use a certain red oil stick. Also, I love the pink oil sticks. I mean these very luminous oil sticks I love and I apply a lot. What I use for painting is very conventional, mainly brushes and my fingers. I use no palette knives practically, only for priming I use this to have a really fine layer and very smooth.

Coming home, 2023
Petra Schott
Oil on canvas, 140 x 140 cm | 55.1 x 55.1 in

For painting with oil colours, I only use brushes in various sizes. I don’t rely on any other tools, except for my fingers. When I need to work quickly, I rub a bit of paint into the canvas with my fingers. The brush gives you a direct connection to the canvas, but I feel even more connected when I use my fingers. I really like that direct connection.

I have one big, messy space where I paint, and it’s where all my works in progress are displayed and stored. And then there’s another area where I keep older pieces, which are smaller and of a certain size. Then, I have a room with a wide wall where I can display my work to look at it. I spend a lot of time looking at this work, and I need some distance, so a big wall is essential. I would never work on a desk, funny enough, but it’s always piled with other things, so I don’t really have the option.

Garden Story, 2023
Petra Schott
Oil on paper, 155 x 105 cm | 61 x 41.3 in

I often work with an easel if the painting is not too big and if it’s stretched already on the wooden bars. And sometimes I pin the paintings to a wall. I stretch it then afterwards or I don’t stretch it at all. I have some pieces of canvas which are really huge, so 2.9 m x 2.9 m, for example. I fix it to the wall and then paint on it. And you can hang it as a carpet. It has these openings, so you could put something through and then hang it like a carpet. I could stretch it, but stretching such a large painting in my studio is a challenge, so I leave it as a loose canvas. Sometimes, if I don’t want the paint to run, I work on the floor. If I’m not in the right mood or don’t know what to do, I turn the music up loud and dance around in my studio.

And sometimes I read a poem. There is no wasted day, even if you don’t know what to do in your studio. You can do other things, you can unstretch something, you can stretch something, you can do these sorts of tasks. It never takes long for me to get inspired, so I’m lucky in that respect. If I feel a painting is going wrong, it becomes more difficult. I mean the easiest solution would be to take it down, cut it up, and make something else out of it. But I can’t do that very often. If there’s already a lot of paint on it, it gets more and more difficult to turn it into something I like. Very often I let it rest for quite some time. So I let it rest, let’s say for a month or even for two months. It’s really for me in a stage, in a state where I don’t know what to do anymore.

Spring Energy, 2024
Petra Schott
Oil on canvas, 125 x 150 cm | 49.2 x 59 in

I let it rest for two, or three months. And then sometimes comes a moment where, yeah, it calls me. I say, now is the day, I can try again. And then sometimes I can save it. In most cases, I can somehow save it and make something different. But sometimes it also happens that I say, no, it’s not worth spending so much time on, so much colour on this painting anymore. You take it down from the wooden support and you make something else out of it. I always work on several paintings because oil paint needs time to dry. It depends on which colours and how thick you have applied the paint. But it needs some time to rest. So if you want to go on every day, you have to work on several paintings to be able to do something every day in your studio.

I always have several paintings which I work on at the same time. Some take longer because I don’t know how to go on. Some I like so much that I’m afraid of spoiling them. I can’t go on. With some, it’s just a never-ending process. Some paintings really need a lot of time. While some are easygoing. When my paintings come to a certain stage nearing completion, I often have the feeling that they only need some brushstrokes here and there, perhaps.

Lover’s Greetings II
Petra Schott
100 x 100 cm | 39.4 x 39.4 in

Often the beautiful little spots are the ones that you have to destroy. The painting only grows into what I want to achieve when I dare to destroy these beautiful spots. I mean, you know the saying, ‘Kill your darlings’, that’s it. To achieve something beautiful, you have to do that. And this point of destruction for me is always difficult. And sometimes I wait and I try otherwise. I try to circumvent this difficult moment. If it doesn’t work, I have to go through that. This is the moment I call destruction. And then very often that is when something new opens. A new door opens and then you see it and then you can go on again.

The titles are important. I think I have no painting left untitled. For me, the challenge is to find something that expresses what I want to express in the painting. And sometimes it’s a series. So I have a big series called ‘Magical Walks’. As I said, I walk a lot. I like to hike. And so it came, it developed from these hikes. And from time to time, I do another one. I have like 20 in the series or so. So there it’s clear and it’s easy.

Once in a While, 2023
Petra Schott
Oil on canvas, 100 x 100 cm | 39.4 x 39.4 in

But also, for the paintings that are not part of the series, I really want to have a title that meets what is in there. And that’s not always easy. Sometimes my painting is done and completed, but I wait. I wait for the title to come up. In a way, it’s a dialogue with the painting again when I ask them to tell me what I can name them. And sometimes this needs time. I mean, I have a tentative name, perhaps a title. And I will note it down. But I often feel, no, that’s not quite it. And I wait. Normally I wait before I’m clear with the title. I’m really sure that this is the right title for the painting.

I’m not so much a fan of specific techniques. But it comes to a point where sometimes it can be helpful to use them. If you are stuck, I don’t know how to go on or so. But I would say, basically my technique is really about focussing on what I like to do. And be open to listen to your inner voice and be present in your inner space so that you know what you really want to do. And develop this line, develop your own individual style and also technique.

I mean, the longer you paint, the more you get confident that you will progress. And you will go there where your work wants to go and where you want to go. So I would say the most important thing is to keep going and do what you really love.

About Petra Schott

Petra Schott is a German abstract painter based in Frankfurt. Her work reflects her everyday life as a woman, her longings and memories, exploring fundamental questions of life. Her emotionally resonant art invites viewers into a space of imagination and introspection. Schott’s paintings blend lyrical abstraction with figurative elements, exploring nostalgia, human relationships, and nature’s intangible aspects. Her work delves into emotions and the human psyche, highlighting fragility, sensitivity, and spirituality.

Art curator Nell Cardozo notes, “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.“

Artist Insights: Petra Schott – Jackson’s Art BlogJackson’s Art Blog