Artist's Statement of Nancy Carlisle Schumacher

Art is a way to show your emotions and express your ideas.
I've used watercolour, Chinese brush stroke painting and more recently oils to show
what I wanted to say about life. Since 1988, I've used watercolour to show through pictures what I was saying
in words about epilepsy, cerebral palsy, Friedreich's ataxia, abuse and learning disabilities. Europeans seemed to be more receptive to my ideas than Americans. I've given posters or talks in 19 countries at various international medical conferences from 1985 to 2004. I first showed my work in Bombay, India in 1985.
I've also displayed my books at medical conferences in India, Germany, Czech Republic and Ireland since 1985.
More recently, a colleague showed Surviving the Spider's Net, A Family's Struggle with Abuse and Epilepsy in
Scotland in October of 2004.
I'm continuously learning new ways to portray my feelings. My art has become more realistic since 2000 when I studied in France with Milford Zorn and Linda Pearson through Flying Colours. Zorn admonished me to learn to draw people, and suggested that I enroll in a class in Life drawing as soon as I returned to the states.
I signed up for Drawing III at Southern CT and that began a degree in Fine Arts that I completed in May of 2004.
I've been painting all of my life, as my mother was an artist in Pine Orchard and later in Old Saybrook where
she painted extensively until her death in 1979. I considered art more of an avocation than a vocation until the 1980's.
Ivan Lesny, MD of Prague was one of the first people to tell me that my pictures said as much or more than my words.
Lesny was one of the instigators who set up the European Child Neurology Congresses that continue today.
William S. Fields, MD of Houston and his wife also liked my work. Fields was my first neurologist, but until the 1990's,
I hadn't seen him for quite some time. I had maintained contact with him for various reasons. At that time, he was head of the MD Anderson Tumor and Cancer Clinic in Houston, Texas. He had helped me seek my dreams of going into Special
Education. We didn't anticipate that I would have so much difficulty with the system because of my epilepsy and a broken hip.
When it became evident that 'the system' wouldn't consider me a good risk for teaching, I decided to write
about children; from there I shifted to illustration. I used watercolour to express my ideas about the emotions felt
by the epileptic, the person with cerebral palsy or Friedreich's Ataxia. Art is an avenue of expression that I've found
both relaxing and fulfilling.



I've shown my work in the American Medical Illustrators Source book for five years, displayed pictures at Claire's Komer
Kopia in New Haven three times in the past ten years, The New Haven Public Library on the Green August, 2005.
My work has also appeared at 21 medical conferences in Europe and China from 1985 to 2004.