By Jillian Risberg 

For Leina’ala Schwartz, one doesn’t “become” an artist/painter, one just IS. And it is in her blood. 

“My art is everything to me and I love sharing it,” Schwartz says. “My neighbors tell me they always come to my front yard when they see I have pieces laying outside drying from the varnish. We’ve had some nice chats and caught up with each other’s lives and neighborhood news.”

According to the Mendham artist, she has a current work in progress from a tiny sepia photograph taken in the 1920s of her grandfather with his friends and family on a sailboat in Vieste, Italy on the tip of the Gargano. 

“I put my heart and soul into these paintings of things I see and places I love and I want to convey that feeling to anyone who views my art,” she says. “I want to say, ‘See how beautiful our world is, protect it.’”

Over the years Schwartz has tried her hand at various artistic modalities, and oil painting resonates the most with her, although the painter sometimes works in acrylics. 

In the past she has also done a series of collages depicting endangered marine species.

“One January evening we had a fabulous sunset that really moved me so I painted it. This is the view out my back door. There is a sheep farm on Main Street in Mendham that had a broken down barn that I decided to paint. Days after I took the photos the barn had been removed,” says the artist. 

She not only paints local scenes, Schwartz captures images of her travels.

And she can’t live without her three easels.  

“One for the current painting, another for the one that’s drying but is still in the works, and the third for the one that’s ready to frame before going into an exhibit,” the artist says.  

Schwartz finds abundant inspiration everyday all around her. 

“My dreams and whatever sights I see,” the painter says. “When it ‘hits’ me I take a photo and paint it.”

Of the elements of art (line, shape, form, value, space, color, texture) the one that concerns Schwartz the most is value — which is what creates contrast and shows the source of the light. Another is perspective, linear and atmospheric. 

“An absolute must in all my paintings because these are the things that put the viewer into the painting,” says the artist. “I hear so often from viewers that they wish they could ‘go there.’”

When it comes to the work of others, Schwartz loves Kandinsky for his design and use of color, Warhol for teaching us that we can do just about anything we darn well please, and Monet for his sheer beauty of the countryside. 

“Most importantly however, are my fellow artists, my peers who are enormously talented and whose art, in my opinion, is every bit as good as the masters,” she says. “I value their works, their input, their critiques and their praise, their camaraderie and their energy and all the hard work they do to promote our art.”

Schwartz had an innate gift for the arts from childhood; with a natural curiosity and appreciation for nature and beauty.

By age two she was entertaining family and friends by reciting, singing and by the age of four, playing the piano. At sixteen she wrote her own songs, taking first place in the talent competition at Morris County Fair, among others and had a recording contract with Ivy Records in New York. 

By high school graduation the painter was awarded a full tuition scholarship for drama from her chosen university and then participated in local theater. 

But that is not all. 

“There were the beauty pageants. I was second runner-up in the Miss Morristown Pageant (1960) and was Miss Morris County 1961,” the artist says from there she went to Wildwood to participate in the Miss New Jersey Pageant, a forerunner of Miss America.

“It was upon retirement that I returned to County College of Morris where I graduated Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Visual Arts, am a member of Phi Theta Kappa, and have been creating art ever since.”

It’s a lovely thing. 

“The serenity it gives me, losing myself in the reality of the painting, the feeling of being there, smelling the aromas of the sea or the woods or the neighborhood,” says Schwartz. “It is a welcome break from the business of life.”

For more information, reach out to the artist for purchases, questions or comments at www.leinaalasart.com.