There’s Hope with Mary Kate Schuchman
Mary Kate Schuchman and her vibrant paintings at The Gallery, June 2026
Welcome to another conversation with our visiting artist of the month! This June, we’re getting to know Mary Kate Schuchman, a 1st grade teacher and painter.
“Pink Lilly”
Let’s start with some lore.
We met Mary Kate a few years ago when our previous gallery manager Maddie Rice started a tradition here known as Workshop Wednesday.
Workshop Wednesday is, well, exactly what it sounds like. On Wednesdays, anyone can drop into The Gallery and use our workshop tables to make progress on any kind of creative project they might have in the works. It’s a BYOP (bring your own project) kind of situation. People can stop in just to chat too, or use our typewriters, which are always fun. Lots of creative people are introverted, and having something to do with your hands while you’re in other creative company can help make the conversation flow a little easier. Or if it stops and it’s awkward, everyone just assumes everyone else got REALLY into what they’re doing in the moment. It’s like a social balm.
Mary Kate started coming to Workshop Wednesdays, painting handmade birthday cards for loved ones and students, and making other small things, “I remember just popping in one day. Maddie worked here. She's the reason I'm actually reinvested in my art. She was really wonderful and encouraging, and I don't even think she realized she was doing it.”
Maddie quickly noticed that her paintings were lovely and unique, and asked her if she’d like to put together a visiting artist show sometime in the future, giving her a long runway to develop a body of work.
Mary Kate was just getting back into painting around that time, after putting it down for a while. She grew up in a creative household on Long Island. “I was always very creative, making things. It was very encouraged in my house. Both of my parents are very talented. My dad does a lot of painting and drawing. But my mom also was always making things. She's the reason why I always make a handmade birthday card for everyone.”
Mary Kate is now a first grade teacher at Warsaw Elementary and continues this tradition from her youth, making each one of her students a handmade birthday card. I can imagine the looks on the faces of those little kiddos when they open her cards, full of bright colors. It must be such a treat for them.
I asked her what the vibe is in a first grade classroom in June, and she responded, “Chaos. Absolute chaos.”
Yep, that sounds about right.
“June is crazy, yet it's when you see the fruits of your labor. They come in barely knowing their letters and now they can read.”
Hang on a second, let’s just think about that. First grade teachers (and probably some kindergarten teachers) are largely responsible for transforming kids into readers. Is there perhaps any role more important? I don’t know, this is the first time I’ve really thought hard about that. I got goosebumps when she described the progress she sees in her first graders between September and June.
“In September, they don't know how to spell much, they can't identify a lot, and now, in June, you're telling me they can read this whole passage and understand what it's saying?” she says.
“So basically, first grade teachers are the G.O.A.T.s?” I said.
“Your words!” she laughs.
We also talked a bit about how the students in her class advance and learn at different paces, and she gives them the language to recognize that that is normal and to be expected. She’ll hear her students echo things she tells them like “Everyone’s brain works differently.”
“Good Boy” by Nolan Adolf and Mary Kate Schuchman
One student whose brain she noticed was specifically artistically inclined was that of her former student, Nolan Adolf.
“When I was working on the paintings for this show, I started thinking about how cool it would be to do a special collaboration with one of my students. And immediately Nolan popped into my head because he is just such a little artist. He is so talented. I was like, this would be so cool — one, I miss him dearly, so I'll get to hang out with him. And I thought it'd be cool for him, as a 2nd grader, to be able to say, ‘Yeah, my artwork's been up in an art gallery.’ So I was like, okay, I gotta do it. And luckily he was super down and his mom was super encouraging and excited to have him be a part of it.”
She would borrow Nolan from his classroom during the school day to work on the painting in small working sessions. “I brought in a couple canvases that were already painted with the base color, and he chose the one with the blue background. We just chatted about what kind of subject matter he wanted — what should we make the focus? And he said, probably dogs, a golden retriever specifically. So we found some reference photos. I gave him paper and asked him to sketch it out and plan how he wanted it to look. Then we transferred the sketch onto the canvas before painting it. And then he came up with the idea of having it surrounded by flowers, and I did that part.”
I love that she thought to include this little budding artist in her show, a special experience he’ll always remember and draw confidence from. I told her a story about a time when I was in 5th grade and expressed interest in following in my band teacher’s footsteps. She handed me the baton and let me conduct the band at a concert! What an incredibly empowering thing for a teacher to do for a student, to see a seed of potential and plant it in an extra big pot.
Happily, Noah was able to attend Mary Kate’s opening art party and celebrate this special achievement with her.
Okay, let’s move from the littlest artist on the wall to the biggest painting on the wall, Daffodils.
“Daffodils”
“Daffodils”, detail
Why daffodils? A symbol of hope. “In winter you're like, oh my God, it's just hard. And the second the flowers start to poke out, it just feels like an incredible amount of joy. Those are the first flowers to pop up that you really see, and it's just like this thing that reminds you — there's hope.”
Not only hope, but also a symbol of love and commitment for Mary Kate and her soon-to-be husband Caleb. “We went to the UK last February, which is where we got engaged. And we went to Wales, because my parents' neighbors' friend lived there. She had a lot of Welsh pride, and daffodils are an important symbol there. So that was a very special time, and it kind of solidified the idea. I guess I'm going to paint some daffodils!”
There’s one painting on the wall that was never for sale.
“Blue Poppies”
This was the first painting Mary Kate made after getting back into the rhythm. I’ve noticed when people come into The Gallery and “ooh” and “ahh” at Mary Kate’s paintings, they often specifically point this one out as a favorite:
“I liked this one so much, and then I did more and I was like, ‘these don't look like that!’ So at first, I was frustrated. But it was more of a reminder that you can push through.”
Important to note:
If you’re reading this right now and feeling inspired to dig out your art supplies from years ago, please be gentle and patient with yourself. It might take a little while for your creative muscles to remember what they’re capable of doing. Keep showing up to your art practice, a little bit every day, and those muscles will come right back, maybe in new and different ways too.
What’s next for Mary Kate?
Well, she’s getting married this summer! But then she aims to work on both ends of the size spectrum. She plans on painting lots of smaller canvases in odd shapes, and she’s been asked to paint a mural. She also welcomes commissions, by the way, ;)
A few parting words from Mary Kate, when asked what she’d like viewers to feel when they look at her artwork: “Happy. Just any sort of joy. There's a lot of brightness, and I'm hoping the bright colors give off that energy. And hopefully inspire someone else who thinks ‘I haven't done this in a while, I used to draw, I used to paint’ to try it again. Pick it back up.”
Stickers!
Mary Kate has a few paintings left on the wall this June, along with some brightly colored stickers. Catch the show before the end of June!
If you made it all the way to the end here, thank you, thank you, thank you, for supporting local artists. It means more than you know.
-Joanna @ The Gallery