NYAB Event - Joan Snyder Exhibition

Joan Snyder Exhibition

Betty Cuningham Gallery

This event has ended.

Betty Cuningham Gallery presents an exhibition of recent paintings by Joan Snyder. The exhibition, A Year in the Painting Life is comprised of approximately 15 paintings. This will be the artist’s third show in the space; she is present for an opening reception on September 16. An illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

Snyder, a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, has been showing in New York since the early 1970’s. She has said that when she started to paint that it was as if she “spoke for the first time – and really spoke, and was able to say what I wanted to say.” As such Snyder’s paintings are full sentences: sometimes sectioned off like pages in a book; sometimes single fields decoding the life cycle of a tree, the moon or a flower, and sometimes her personal politics whether it be feminist issues, anti-war sentiment, or a memorial for a personal loss.

This exhibition focuses more on the singular field paintings reminiscent of Snyder’s early stroke paintings of the 1970’s. But unlike the earlier stroke paintings Snyder introduces all sorts of media. In Oh, April, a triptych and the largest painting in the show, Snyder uses (in addition to oil and acrylic on linen) burlap, fabric, pastel, dirt, herbs and seeds. Each medium carries with it a meaning which contributes to the sentence of Oh April. In Ode to B, a memorial to a close friend, red strokes, some appearing to be hearts, drip to the base of the painting, and a small ghost like sail boat transgresses the impastoed white surface.

Joan Snyder was born in Highland Park, NJ in 1940. She received an AB from Douglass College in 1962 and a MFA from Rutgers University in 1966. She lives and works in Brooklyn and Woodstock, NY. Throughout her career, Snyder has received a host of prestigious awards and honors. Most recently, in 2007, as mentioned above, she was honored as a recipient of The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.