On view: ‘Sylvia Snowden: Painting Humanity’ presents abstract portraits thick with paint and rich in color at UK’s Hepworth Wakefield

SYLVIA SNOWDEN, ‘Beverly Johnson’, 1978 (acrylic pastel and oil on masonite, 121.9 x 243.8 cm). | © Sylvia Snowden. Courtesy of Edel Assanti and Franklin Parrasch Gallery. Photo by Andy Keate

On View features images from noteworthy exhibitions

WASHINGTON, DC ARTIST Sylvia Snowden (b. 1942) presents her first solo institutional exhibition in Europe. ‘Sylvia Snowden: Painting Humanity’ at The Hepworth Wakefield in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK is a comprehensive study of 10 paintings dating from the 1970s to 2001. The earliest works were produced in the years following her education their basic. Snowden earned both a BFA and an MA from Howard University, where he studied with David C. Driskell. In the years between her HBCU degrees, she studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, France, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.

Snowden paints with a sense of abandon. He is not afraid to get involved with the canvas. Thick in paint and rich in color, the result is incredibly powerful and moving. The abstract figurative works exhibited are portraits. Each features a lonely subject, such as iconic model Beverly Johnson or Julie Shepherd, a neighbor in artist Shaw’s M Street neighborhood in Washington. Snowden’s portraits are not meant to resemble her subjects, rather the amorphous and contorted forms explore their humanity and psychological state. Her dramatic gestures speak to a spectrum of emotions, from triumph and joy to sadness and pain. “I imagine how we as human beings maneuver through our lives,” Snowden said in the video below. “I make an effort to paint what we all feel as human beings, regardless of race, it doesn’t matter, in my paintings. What matters is that we are all human beings.” CT

“Sylvia Snowden: Painting Humanity” is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, UK from March 16-Nov. 3, 2024

Sylvia Snowden at Hepworth Wakefield, 15 March 2024. | Photo by Nick Singleton

SYLVIA SNOWDEN, ‘Julia Shepherd’, 1980 (acrylic pastel and oil on masonite, 243.8 x 121.9 cm). | © Sylvia Snowden. Courtesy of Edel Assanti and Franklin Parrasch Gallery. Photo by Andy Keate

SYLVIA SNOWDEN, Elizabeth Johnson, 1978 (). | © Sylvia Snowden. Courtesy of Edel Assanti and Franklin Parrasch Gallery. Photo by Andy Keate

SYLVIA SNOWDEN, ‘Steven Thornhill’, 1979 (acrylic pastel and oil on masonite, 243.8 x 121.9 cm). | © Sylvia Snowden. Courtesy of Edel Assanti and Franklin Parrasch Gallery. Photo by Andy Keate

From the gallery where the ‘Painting Humanity’ exhibition is on view at The Hepworth Wakefield, Sylvia Snowden talks about the meaning and inspiration for her paintings and how her childhood experiences seeded her love of color and pursuit of art. | Video by The Hepworth Wakefield

FIND MORE about Sylvia Snowden on her website

READ MORE about Sylvia Snowden in an interview conducted by Joe Bradley last summer in BOMB magazine and coverage of a National Gallery of Art artist panel on the 20th century African American art world Washington, DC, on Culture Type

BOOK SHELF
Sylvia Snowden’s work is featured in the recent volume “Beauty Born of Struggle: The Art of Black Washington.” Now out of print, “M Street: Sylvia Snowden” (2022) documents an exhibition at the Franklin Parrasch Gallery in New York.