Lynn Schwebach

In an age shaped by artificial intelligence, automation, and proliferating forms of the nonhuman, my work turns toward questions of what it means to remain human by connecting us to those who came before and those yet to come.

My STRANDS series explores the unseen traces that move through us: fragments of ancestors, places, objects, animals, and environments that persist beyond their physical presence. I am interested in the elusive sense through which we apprehend these connections—a form of intuition that is neither visual nor auditory, but felt somewhere beyond language.

I build each painting through layers of watercolor, oil, ink, and other materials. Watercolor underpaintings establish an accumulation of images that are partially obscured, transformed, and carried forward into subsequent layers. The process becomes a kind of palimpsest, in which what has been painted before remains present within what is newly emerging.

These layers form a visual scaffolding of memory, matter, and association. Human and nonhuman, organic and inorganic, presence and absence converge to create something new, perhaps an entity composed of what came before yet open to further transformation.

The unresolved spaces within the paintings are equally important. I see them not as emptiness, but as active space: an invitation for the viewer to enter the work and add their own memories, associations, and intuitions.

What appears transparent or void may contain a density of unseen connections. Strands inhabits that space between the visible and the imperceptible, where past, present, and future remain in continual formation.

Suicide Prevention

A percentage of each sale made on schwebacharts.com will be donated to a suicide prevention group, or another social justice or arts organization.  If you purchase a painting and would like 15% donated to a specific cause or organization, please contact me.

Proceeds of past sales have been donated to Touchstone Health Partners in Fort Collins, Colorado, Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, The Loveland Foundation in New York City, and No More Deaths in Ajo, Arizona.

Jacob Schwebach

At the age of 14, Jake held his hands up to me—his mother— on a dark, sultry summer night. He used his index fingers and thumbs to make a square frame, and held this artist’s viewfinder up to my eyes so I could see what he was seeing. Through darkened low-hanging branches over Lake Madison in South Dakota, Jake showed me how he would frame a picture of the branches, coconut-white moon and crystalline water. “Look at this picture. So beautiful. When I get my camera, I will be taking shots like these all the time.” A few weeks later, Jake got his first 35mm camera, and before he passed away at the age of 22, in November 2015, he held true to that promise. He took thousands of stunning photos on three different continents, of cherished friends, family, animals and any and all objects of elegance. Jake also discovered his passion for environmental activism and social justice as many of his later photos demonstrate. Jake’s photographs speak of his quest to find grace in this often unkind world—because at times, Jake suffered great loneliness. Jake's work often reflects his search for hope, and for the conviction of things not seen.