Harcum Gallery summer exhibit features Brian Snowden’s abstract images
(Submitted photo)
Brian Snowden pays heed to the legend of Grandma Moses, who took up artistic painting later in life. Upon his retirement as a business professor at Wilmington College in 2022, he decided to explore something new. Impressed with abstract art, he decided to give it a try.
Wilmington College’s Harcum Art Gallery is featuring a summer exhibition of Snowden’s work weekdays, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., through July 31, and by special appointment arranged by Gallery Curator Hal Shunk, emeritus professor of art. A public reception honoring the artist will be held on July 16, from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., just before the College/Community Summer Theatre’s opening night of “Xanadu: The Musical.”
Snowden grew up in a military family. His father was Lt. General Lawrence F. Snowden, a highly decorated Marine who served 37 years and was a veteran of the battles of Iwo Jima, Saipan and Tinian. Typical for military families, they moved frequently, and his childhood included living in Virginia, New Jersey, California and Paris, France. His mother, Martha, was a gifted artist who painted with oils but pursued the medium only as a hobby. Snowden’s parents made sure that he was exposed to culture and art. This included visiting some of America’s and Europe's greatest museums.
Snowden, who has written three novels, took up photography at an early age and initially pursued most of his creative efforts with the camera. Painting was never really a pursuit while he was working fulltime and raising four children with his wife, Julia, a native of Peru.
In retirement, the new “pursuit” quickly turned into something of an obsession. Snowden’s sense of creativity came to life, and he began to explore the concepts of dimensionality, chiaroscuro and bold color combinations. He considers his work to be highly “subjective and instinctive.” He sees painting as a form of taking sensations and emotions and converting them into images. Snowden noted, “My subconscious mind is trying to break through the barrier to my conscious mind and translate brain activity into images that convey ideas that are otherwise difficult to describe.”
As he scrutinized his mother’s paintings in recent years, Snowden realized he obtained his senses for color, dimensionality and brush and palette strokes from her. “I have a vivid imagination and a strong sense of creativity,” he said, noting he possesses an "eye" for colors, contours, shades (particularly chiaroscuro) and shapes to produce his paintings. He paints using a combination of materials, including acrylics, oils, pigments and gesso, applying the media with brush, sponge and palette knife.
“I describe my painting as instinctive in nature,” he added. “The themes are based on my psychological state when I am in the studio. Much of my work reflects what is happening in my subconscious mind as it strives to communicate with my conscious mind.”
Snowden cites a quote by popular artist Peter Max as a possible explanation for much of his work: "I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman."