Reeve Schley was born in New York City in 1936. He received a BA from Yale University, an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with Francis Speight and Franklin Watkins, and studied in Munich with Josef Buchty.
Schley is known for his light-colored paintings of people at leisure, made in plein air in Central Park, rural New Jersey, or public beaches. Focused on evoking a holistic sense of a place or experience, Schley depicts select elements using sketchy outlines and gestural passages of color, leaving the viewer to fill in the details on blank faces or empty patches of canvas. “Once I’ve indicated what interests me—the weather, the people, the vegetation, the ocean—there’s no need to stuff the painting with more information,” he says. His works recall both an impressionistic sensibility and the simplified forms and colors of Milton Avery.
He is the recipient of the Schweitzer Prize from the National Academy of Design. Schley lives and works on his farm in Whitehouse, NJ.
