Curiously these paintings offer a sensual presence that is often wrapped in a orderly relationship to the grid.  The latter is never present in the how they are painted but rather in the combination of 2 or 4 panels.  That said, there are some single painted panels like Cloud

Werner Schmidt, Sketch of White Painting, 2006, handmade water based color on wood, 4 component parts, 41 x 54 in

Werner Schmidt, Night Light, 2006, handmade water based color on wood, 43 x 56 in

(ultramarine on light blue) which channels a Rothko sensibility without the distraction the multi-panel arrangement.  This painting is a straightforward landscape influenced abstraction and Werner Schmidt’s reductive combination of colors is quietly stunning. Night Light is a work of environmental smoky darkness.  Sketch of a White Painting, with its 4 neatly compartmentalized images discovers a fine balance between intellectual orderliness and the sensual anarchy. The other multi-panel works include the same esthetic but the disjointedness resulting from the combined imagery is sometimes annoying.  Then again that may be the artist’s point, to present a lyricism in a discombobulated context in the interest of creating something greater then the sum of its parts. How successful this is varies from painting to painting.

Werner Schmidt, Cloud (ultramarine on light blue), 2007, handmade water based color on wood, 33 x 44.5 in

Werner Schmidt, Little Berlin Skies (yellow / blue grey), 2006, handmade water based color on wood, Diptych, 24 x 64 in