Schery's Downtown/NYC Series began after 9/11.

Phase I paintings were born out of a time of great sadness, shock, anger and despair, when the lens of America’s vision was dimmed forever by horrific acts of unprecedented terror. The time when a vital, vibrant area of a city, a state, a nation, a world, was spun into concentric circles of grief and suffering. Our connection to each other became a cruel, black, lace of loss. Our collective memory was seared forever in bleak spirit and utter absence of light.

A year after 9/11 came Phase II. Sitting on a downtown bench, the eye extracts the moment that exists in color and line and wind and sound. Surrounded by the structures and people that used to seem so impervious, so “always,” but now the impermanence of these bones and flesh is clearly understood. The city is filtered through the smoke of memory, a film of loss, barely softened by our lens of hope in the life that still remains. It is time to “go underground”, to mine the deep reserve of strength and resilience, and begin to rebuild.

In Phase III, “Spring”, the shadows of terror still haunt the land, and war prevails, still. Will we ever return to that astonishing blue sky of the mind we knew before those planes struck? I don’t think we can go back to where we were, but I know that love is the grace of mankind and it is the only thing that makes sense of this world. If any country can recover from such madness, it is The United States of America, because its people are the heart of hope. This phase expresses that resurgence.

Hope flies the soul, and love springs the winter of the heart.