Magic in Motion
This painting is based on Manfred Schatz’s painting “Feathered Magic.” I tried to decode the process by which he was able to characterize flight, movement, and the blur of duck wings with just a few brushstrokes. Schatz was a master of depicting animal movement. I decided to replicate this painting in my own style, using oil paint on an aluminum panel. I was humbled by this process and what Schatz made look so effortless was truly masterful.
Magic in Motion: after Manfred Schatz’s Feathered Magic
Oil on Aluminum
36” x 48” 2022
Schatz was born in 1925 in Bad Stepenitz, near the mouth of the Oder River in Germany. In Ocober of 1943, he was sent to war, and shortly thereafter was imprisoned by the Russian military. The Stalingrad camp conditions were horrific, but after being noticed for his artistic ability, he was put to work to copy paintings for Russian officers. When he was released in 1949, he weighed only 98 pounds. After surviving a bout of tuberculosis, he joined his brother who was working as a government game warden on a preserve in northern Germany. There he spent hours in the field and on hunts studying the wildlife and began to paint again.Schatz lived and worked in his Meerbusch, Germany studio until his death in 2004.
Manfred Schatz Feathered Magic. Oil, 15” x 21” 1974.
His words regarding art, painting, and wildlife resonate with me:
I paint only as the human eye can grasp animals in the wild. That is, the details are lost; I paint according to the actual, momentary, unreflected, retinal impression. I will only paint what is really visible.
Everyone should paint the way he feels. It does not matter whether it is romantic, naturalistic, impressionistic - the only thing that counts is that you do not follow a trend.
Art is the highest and most valuable kind of human thinking and feeling. It is the visible and audible expression of man’s soul through knowledge and ability.
Absolute art is achieved when nothing that is in it can be left out, when all essential things are present, and nothing is in excess. That is art.
My life’s work as an artist has been to depict animals in motion. It is the most difficult thing I have ever attempted.
…because animals can survive without humans, but humans can never survive without animals.
Terry Wieland, The Moving Art of Manfred Schatz (Houston, Gulf Publishing Company 1991), 130, 133-136, 156.
Magic in Motion is available for purchase. Please click here:
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And if you are in the area, stop by to see it in person!