Joan Snyder

“Snyder enjoys playing with the notion that a glob of paint or a brushstroke can lie in indeterminate territory between abstraction and bio morphism. She heightens this effect by coating her paints with high gloss or texturing them by embedding them in the burlap she applies to the canvas. She also adheres dried stalks, seed pods, and expanses of dirt to heighten the tension between the natural materials and painted media in her work. In the end, all of their colors originate from the earth. And like the hieroglyphs, which we admire so much for their frequent onomatopoeic literalness, in that the sound they represent is the picture we see, Snyder also toys with the interstitial territory of where the nature stops, and the art begins.”

(William Corwin, “Joan Snyder: The Summer Becomes a Room”, The Brooklyn Rail, 17 October 2020)