Bill Schmidt
Bill Schmidt has been a professional landscape painter for more than 30 years after careers as a nuclear engineer, consultant, and founder and president of a training firm. His art training consisted of working with several superb outdoor landscape painters and studying the masters of French and American Impressionism and the New England school of marine painters. (His undergraduate degree from Cornell University was in chemical and nuclear engineering.)
His distinctive paintings are realistic yet impressionistic, painterly but with enough attention to detail so that the subject matter is easily recognizable. He paints outdoors in all seasons at home and in his travels, from New England to California and in Venice,
Paris, and Bermuda. Even the foreign scenes are mostly done en plein air using a Pochade Box and archival boards when it’s too difficult to fly with a full-size easel. Bill lives in Rockville, MD, a suburb of Washington, DC, with his wife, Dottie; they have three children and five grandchildren. Besides painting, Bill enjoys reading about art and artists, visiting art museums, and attending opera and theater. When working in his studio, he always paints to opera recordings because the music energizes him!
Bill became a plein air painter with his first outdoor lesson one October afternoon more years ago than he cares to count, and he has continued to do most of his work on site for the 30+ years he’s been a professional artist. For Bill, there is a special excitement that 
comes from being inspired by a scene and then meeting the challenge of capturing it outdoors before the light and effects are gone. While I try for spontaneity in his paintings, He still has a routine that he uses when creating a painting. Once he is inspired by the colors, light effects, and design elements in a potential scene, he makes numerous pencil sketches to develop the composition he likes best. Then he proceeds to paint that image, en plein air in most cases, using a palette that enables him to convey bright, lively scenes as well as react to overcast skies, fog, and even rain.
He takes the painting to a certain point while in the field, then review it later in his studio, make any corrections, and add finishing touches than can best be done after the initial paint has dried. The resulting painting is easily recognizable as “a Bill Schmidt”!
As you browse through his Portfolio, you will see examples of his marines, cities and towns, countrysides, and gardens and florals in both original oils and reproductions. You will also see examples of some of his favorite painting locations, from across this country and including Paris, Venice, and Bermuda. He hopes you enjoy viewing these scenes as much as he enjoyed painting them. Should you wish to buy any of his originals, the price listed includes gallery-quality framing.
