Lynn Schwebach

Like many, I’ve lived through moments of deep joy and heartbreaking sorrow—often simultaneously. Painting is the only language I’ve found that can hold such complex, layered emotion. Words fall short, but color, shape, and texture allow me to process and express what cannot be easily explained.

I’m drawn to subjects that live in the space between opposites: joy and sadness, confusion and clarity, stillness and motion. That tension is where meaning resides for me. Through my work, I hope to create a kind of visual threshold—a walkway into a transcendent space where emotions resist categorization and invite contemplation.

Though I began my professional life as a writer after leaving Chicago in 1987, my creative path has continually evolved. I fell in love with photography in 1989 and began studying drawing and painting in 1993, learning from artists across Colorado and Wyoming. Most recently, I’ve taken art classes at ateliers in the Denver area in order to integrate my love of realism with contemporary abstraction.

My home in Colorado offers daily inspiration, but I also seek out distant places—continually exploring new ways to express the nuance of lived experience.

I hope that through my art I will continue my son Jake's quest for beauty, grace, and meaning. Jake left this earth way too early. He struggled with mental illness almost his entire 22 years. But while here, he shared my love of beauty through the lens and with paint. His experiments with his art committed me to courageous exploration and daring. 

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.