BIO

Naomi Schlinke is an Austin-based painter whose practice has developed from a longstanding engagement with movement, beginning with many years as a dancer, teacher, and choreographer in San Francisco. There she performed with the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and the Joe Goode Performance Group. She earned a B.A. and M.A. in Dance from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Although her work shifted from performance to painting by 1990, the experience of working through the body remains fundamental to her visual practice.

Born in New York and raised in Dallas, Schlinke lived and worked in San Francisco for twenty years before relocating to Austin in 1994. Over the past three decades, her paintings have been exhibited widely in Texas as well as nationally. Selected exhibitions include the Art Museum of South Texas, Dallas Contemporary, Women & Their Work in Austin, the Painting Center in New York, McKinney Avenue Contemporary in Dallas, and exhibitions at Texas State University and the Austin Museum of Art. Her work has also been presented by Robert McClain Gallery in Houston and Braunstein-Quay Gallery in San Francisco, where she was represented.

Schlinke has participated in numerous curated and juried exhibitions, including Texas Women of Abstraction at the Art Museum of South Texas and The Indivisible Spectrum at the Painting Center in New York. Her work has been the subject of critical writing, interviews, and exhibition essays, including coverage in The Austin Chronicle, Kolaj Magazine, and The Woven Tale Press.


“What interests me most is to find the shortest distance between the nature of the materials and the image produced. Working with brushes as well as pouring, rolling, compressing, sanding, washing, and other events, I look for an image that appears to be “naturally occurring” like rain or snow---something that is perpetually in transition. I make use of the uncanny resemblances that occur, allowing them to resonate, suggesting a narrative dimension.” Naomi Schlinke