Myra Schuetter is known for her highly involved, super-realistic, colorful, large-scale watercolors. Many of her paintings measure five feet by five feet or only slightly smaller. Myra spends months on a single painting, using traditional methods or transparent watercolor. She first creates intricate drawings before touching paint to paper, and then applies layer upon layer of color to achieve an intensity uncommon in watercolors.

Myra’s work graces the walls of many private and corporate collections in Indiana and the Washington, D.C. area. She has been involved in her community as a board member of the local arts commission, and has spent a great deal of time lecturing museum docents, local and regional elementary, secondary and university students as well as conducting adult art classes. In 2005, The Sheldon Swope Art Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana, presented a solo exhibition of her work, and in 2000, she was awarded the Martha and Merritt deJong Memorial Artist-in-Residency at the Evansville Museum of Arts, Science and History in Evansville, Indiana, also enjoying a solo exhibition there. The Krempp Gallery, in her hometown of Jasper, Indiana held a solo exhibition of her paintings in 1996. She has exhibited her work at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio as an invited artist and as part of an exhibit of the large private collection of the late Phil Desind, owner of the first gallery to represent Myra.

Her painting, Old Glass and Cookbooks, is part of the permanent collection of the Evansville Museum. The painting, Pure Indiana, composed entirely of items made in the state, was done as a commission for Indiana’s former Governor, Joe Kernan Jr. The painting Maria’s Dinner Table belongs to the collection of work of Midwest artists at Old National Bank in Evansville, and the painting What A Fruitcake! is part of the permanent collection of American Contemporary Art at the Swope Museum.

Myra has been labeled a “meticulous realist” and as obsessive-compulsive. She feels both are accurate:

“Yes, I do spend many months and long hours executing the color and detail of my work on a grand scale. But, I figure that is what it takes for me to build what I want to be a feast for your eyes. I want you to get caught up in the richness of detail, the play of light and textures and the intense color, and to never be disappointed in what you have looked more closely to see.”