We recently connected with Gary Schwartz and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Gary, thanks for joining us today. What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

When I was in the 6th grade, I was put into the advanced art class at my public middle school in Coney Island where i grew up. My teacher, Mrs. Gurton, became my guardian angel and was the first person to take me aside and say, “Gary, you have a great deal of talent, and I believe you will pursue art as a future career”. Well, at that age, in one ear and out the other, right? I just wanted to survive puberty.

Fast forward 20 years. I am now “between” careers and find myself working at the information desk at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Working in such a visible capacity, one eventually comes into contact with everyone you ever knew, and if you have a photographic memory as I do, you really do never forget a face. One afternoon, in walks a petit woman in her 70’s I imagined. I knew immediately it was Mrs. Gurton whom I had not seen since graduating middle school in 1976, I thought she looked exactly the same, me not so much. When she approached the front desk to ask for directions, I immediately blurted out, OMG MRS. GURTON!!! Well she took a good long look at me and as a great big smile began to form across her pretty face, she said, Gary I think???

Well, it turned out we lived very near to one another in Brooklyn, so we arranged a lunch date at a local diner for the following week. We met, sat down, still in utter disbelief that we had reunited, and she said, “My dear Gary, before we order lunch I have something for you.” It was then I noticed that she had walked in with a small art portfolio. She proceeded to remove 3 mylar sleeve pages and handed them to me saying, “I thought that you would enjoy having these in your collection”. I carefully pulled out from each sleeve, in mint condition as if they were drawn yesterday, 3 contour line self-portraits that I drew in her 6th grade advanced art class. She saved them in her files for over 20 years. As I tried to hide my quickly moistening eyes with a napkin, I told her that this gift meant more to me than she will ever, ever know. I actually think she knew. We became close friends for the rest of her life.

This remains the kindest thing that anyone has ever done for me.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

In my studio practice I am considered a Social Realist painter, although Deborah Solomon of The New York Times once referred to my style as POP Realism. Utilizing a very strong narrative in each series that I create, my current body of work consists of acrylics on canvas, depicting my childhood memories of Coney Island, where I grew up, as well as my travels abroad and throughout the US. The works utilize contemporary realism with an homage to Dutch and Flemish baroque paintings.

When not in the studio, I can be found at York Prep School on the upper west side of Manhattan, where for the past nine years I have been employed as their 6th through 12th grade art teacher. I am currently completing my 30th year of full time art teaching, having worked in some of Manhattan’s finest independent schools. I received my BFA from the New York School of Visual Arts in 1983.

My current solo exhibition is called ANACHRONISM.

…a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned.
“Everything was as it would have appeared in VERMEER’S HOLLAND of the baroque Golden Age, apart from one anachronism, a Folger’s electric perc coffee can.”

In this latest series of acrylics on canvas, I am exploring the theme of anachronistic imagery, specifically morphing Kodachrome color slides of the 1960’s, with appropriated imagery from the Dutch Golden Age. Characters and objects depicted by painters such as Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals, time travel to mid 20th century Coney Island, for instance.

My work is a form of POP hyper realism combined with the sensibility of the social realists of the Ashcan School such as Edward Hopper and Reginald Marsh, along the way tipping my hat to David Hockney and the aforementioned Dutch Masters.

I grew up in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn New York in the 1960’s and 1970’s, where my father was employed as the manager of the world famous Nathan’s hotdog empire. This gritty landscape has had an enormous influence on the art that I create today in 2023.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I graduated from SVA (School of Visual Arts) in Manhattan, in 1983. My major was graphic design and advertising art direction. Upon graduation, a “very rich uncle” of mine who worked for one of NYC’s most famous real estate firms, helped secure me a job in that company’s advertising division. So in the summer of 1983, my creative journey began just a few blocks West of Madison Avenue.

To say I hated this first job would be a gross understatement. It was actually a brutal environment of deranged, drug addled creative directors who were verbally abusive to underlings, and deadline pressures that were unreasonable to even the most seasoned professionals. I lasted one year at that first job. My second agency experience was much better, for a while. At the end of the day, however, I knew deep down that I wanted to be a painter, and the commercial art field was just not working for me. So at the ripe young age of 26 i quite the business cold turkey and scrounged around for a few years working the lobby desks of the Met. Museum of Art and MoMA. making no money now compared to advertising, at least I was starting to build a body of paintings.

Happy I was painting and finding my voice in that arena, I was miserable that I could not make enough to pay rent on a decent apartment. Finally in my last dead end job at a large bank, working in the security department, I met a woman who would in one conversation, change the trajectory of my life. She was the executive chef of the bank’s corporate dining room and we had become very good friends. One day, hanging out in her corporate kitchen, feeling quite despondent, she asked if I ever thought about being a children’s art teacher. I told her the thought crossed my mind. She convinced me to go to the Board of Education at 100 Livingston street in downtown Brooklyn and get a file number so at least I could start by being a substitute teacher. I did just that and wound up subbing in NYC public schools for 3 years. Eventually I found back doors were opening for me in tony private school on the upper west side, one thing led to another, and another, and another, and now I am starting the 2023-24 school year at York Prep School on West 68th street for my 30th year of full time art teaching. As we say in Coney island, it has been a ride!

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Yes indeed. At the beginning of my painting career, I wish I had know about artist colonies and residencies. These are rarified, subsidized institutions or foundations or estates, that offer working artists at all stages uninterrupted time to create. If you are one of the “lucky chosen few”, you are typically awarded anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks, to come live in a place with other artists, meals lodging and studio spaces are usually gratis or at a greatly reduced rate. Sometime they even throw in a stipend for travel expenses.

In 2008, I was honored and luck to have been a one month residency at The Millay Colony in Austerlitz New York in the Berkshires. Living with 5 other writers, poets, and painters in a great big barn that was the former home and workshop of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, I had 3 meals a day prepared by a chef, a cute barn bedroom, shared bathroom, and a 300 sq ft. private painting studio. It was Shangri la, and in the one month I was able to produce 6 finished paintings. This was awarded to me as a mid-career painter, and it was awesome, but I wish I had known they existed when I was emerging.

Contact Info:

• Website: garyschwartz.online
• Instagram: #GARSCH
• Facebook: Gary Schwartz
• Youtube: You can try, I might pop up from time to time.

Image Credits
All of the images are acrylic paintings created by me, Gary Schwartz between 2000-2023.