"I deal with the portrayal of space"

I recently toured the new expansion of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. In addition to rooms upon rooms of British horse portraits (originally acquired by the Mellon family) was a small but lovely collection of contemporary art, including this painting by the West German artist David Schnell. The canvas mesmerized me with its harsh strokes of precise perspective. Schnell moved to Leipzig after the Berlin Wall fell to study at the city's Academy of Art. You can glimpse the hopeful dreariness of Leipzig's landscape peaking through the door frame of a barn busting loose of gravity.