For Painting Between The Lines, fourteen contemporary painters created newly commissioned paintings based on descriptions of paintings in historical and contemporary novels by authors such as Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, Sylvia Plath, and Milan Kundera. By examining the ways contemporary artists look at storytelling, literature and writing as expressions of individual thought, Painting Between The Lines looks at the state of contemporary painting today, presenting some of its most innovative practitioners such as Laylah Ali, Marcel Dzama, and Fred Tomaselli.

In his drawings and paintings, Norbert Schwontkowski (who lives in Bremen and Berlin) does not explore the path to abstract visualization and instead has discernible objects and figures emerge from the foundation to the images he creates.

Norbert Schwontkowski is featured in the CCA Wattis Institute's Painting Between the Lines, which continues the Institute's investigation into the relationship between literature and art. For this show, the CCA Wattis Institute has commissioned fourteen artists to create paintings based on descriptions of paintings in historical and contemporary novels. Examining the state of contemporary painting, Painting Between the Lines attest to the vitality of the medium. Though literary sources have been a common source of painting's subject matter historically, more recently, painting has looked to history, society, politics and itself for inspiration. Schwontkowski's painting responds to Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.