“Schiltkamp is one contemporary artist who approaches time-honored themes with genuine commitment and unmatched passion. What sets her work apart from others who would endeavor to revive similar themes and motifs as a vital aesthetic endeavor is her ability to forge connections between the classical and the modern, the figurative and the abstract, and thus, as T.S. Eliot put it in his essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ to achieve ‘objectivity in the continuity of tradition in art.’

‘Degrees of Freedom’ demonstrates that the fragmented nature of modern reality can be restored to classical wholism with a harmonious composition featuring several figures aswirl in a rhythmic ritual dance. Perhaps the titles signifies the artist’s ability to take liberties with the art of the past without abusing the privilege, for this majestic large canvas, with its sweeping compositional rhythms, is remarkable for its exquisitely balanced combination of joyous freedom and formal restraint. The painting can be seen as the visual counterpoint of a well-known definition of poetry: ‘emotion recollected in tranquility.'”

Maurice Taplinger
Art critic
“Gallery & Studio”
New York, September/October 2002

” …………. Her way of unifying figural , landscape and architectural elements is markedly modern, for she treats the entire composition as a unified whole in the manner of an abstract painter, …………… Another way in which  Schiltkamp makes her paintings resonate as simultaneously classical and contemporary is by giving her figures an intriguing combination of ideal and non-ideal qualities, as well as by introducing a metaphysical sense of space into an ostensibly naturalistic context …….”

Andrew Margolis
Art critic
“Gallery & Studio “
New York, March 2000

” ……… yet her mythological and classical paintings are never staid nor stoic, but they possess a driving life-force in the tremendous movement and expressiveness that she
creates …….”

Lissa McClure
Art historian
New York, 1996

Schiltkamp’s large canvases possess an unsurpased energy, owing in part to her compositional gifts , as well as to her unique way with color […] Maryleen Schiltkamp is that rare painter capable of simultaneously reviving a tradition and extending it beyond its original barriers into heretofore unexplored areas of aestetic discovery …..”

Zoltan Hegyes
Art critic
“Art Speak” Magazine
New York, December 1995