Edward Schulman

Mr. Schulman has a style that is unlike any other artist on the Vineyard, and he is easily recognizable as his own. He uses a limited palette of muted colors favoring brick tones, grayish blues, off whites, and grays. He tends to favor the linear, making good use of somewhat elongated vertical figures — people, buildings, sailboats. His style could be called primitive but, more accurately, his paintings are highly stylized yet he makes perfect sense of his subjects with limited, well-placed lines, palette knife strokes, lots of texture, and a few daubs of color or white.
He covers a range of subjects — both static and animated — but there’s similar energy in both. The cityscape is one of his staples. He manages to capture the mood and energy of a city perfectly, which is not surprising since it is a subject he knows very well. “I was born and raised in New York City where I had unlimited opportunities to visit museums, the opera, universities, and libraries,” Mr. Schulman said during a recent visit to his Vineyard Haven studio. “After a successful work career, I started painting. Cityscapes come naturally to me because I can see the city whenever I want to. I chose to paint cities because I find that a very satisfying subject.”