Online Viewing Room #1

DRAWING INTO PAINT – Gordo Snyder

August 7 – September 7, 2019

ARTIST STATEMENT

My works are small – if I was an architect, I would do the drawings and finished studies for the structures but the final buildings would never be built. I love the process and the planning and the drawing more than striving for a finished product. I stop and sign the work when it tells me it is finished.

I am doing this exhibition because I want people/artists to know I am an artist and a curator. I believe I am a good curator because I have studied art and I try to understand the history of arts and culture and how it relates to society. I don’t choose art because I think it will sell – I look for that special something that sets an artist apart from the rest. I also love art and collecting art.

I like the idea of an Online Viewing Room because the works don’t have to be framed, shipped and hung (until sold, that is) – they are just there for anyone who wants to look at them and that makes them accessible to people more than in the past.

Shortly after I graduated, I was offered the opportunity to buy 1/3 interest in a prominent gallery in Calgary that had been operating since 1945. I became an art dealer with an art degree and my job was to work with senior Western Canadian artists – selecting work for exhibitions, writing and designing their catalogues and selling their artworks. I learned more from those senior artists in their studios than I ever learned in art school.

I never stopped drawing and painting but I sold other artists work to make a living.  My thesis was titled ‘What is Finished?’  I have always loved the process more than the idea of a finished product. I want the viewer to be able to understand my art but ‘finish it for themselves’.

I paint people mostly and some landscape – and since I’ve been living in the Philippines, I’ve been fascinated by the culture and I’ve tried to capture that in my own way – people in the markets, loose expressionistic portraits, and artists in my life.

I always wanted to be an artist – doodling and drawing for as long as I can remember. After two years of Art Education at UofA  and a 6 month stint in Europe, I went to the Alberta College of Art for 4 years majoring in Drawing and Painting.

Drawing reveals what is in the artist’s imagination.

In my process, I use rag printmaking paper, get it wet, draw quickly with a pencil that works into wet. Sometimes they are finished as a drawing but often I continue with a series of acrylic wash/thicker paint overpainting, then more drawing, wash it again and play with it until it feels complete.

I almost always draw into the wet paint at the end so drawing ends the artwork instead of starting it. A play on finished/unfinished. I hope the works speak for itself.

At 68, I have been influenced by many artists – Van Gogh and the German Expressionists and Bauhaus/Paul Klee. I learned professional art practice from the artists we represented – Illingworth Kerr,  William Perehudoff, Dorothy Knowles and Louis de Niverville.

Today, I love being surrounded by Filipino artists and watching them evolve and grow. I’d always worked with senior artists before but it is also exciting to mentor emerging artists from the provinces as they grow and learn.