04 August 2023 Edel Assanti announce the debut solo exhibition of renowned artist Sylvia Snowden in the UK. This exhibition, organised in collaboration with Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York, showcases eight large-scale paintings from Snowden's groundbreaking M Street series, all created in 1978 and presented publicly for the first time since the late 70s.
Sylvia Snowden's remarkable painting career spans over six decades, and she is celebrated for her expressive brushwork and intricately layered canvases. Her artistic themes revolve around commemorating everyday experiences of ordinary individuals, capturing their emotional essence with candid portrayals of their deliberations, triumphs, struggles, and joys. While Snowden draws inspiration from the Western tradition of expressionism, where color, gesture, and emotion hold prominence, her works always tend towards abstraction, reflecting a unique and unconventional style that challenges traditional painterly norms.
Sylvia Snowden, Beverly Johnson, 1978, Acrylic and oil pastel on Masonite, 121.9 x 243.8 cm, 48 x 96 in. Copyright the artist. Courtesy Edel Assanti and Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York. Photo: Adam Reich.
In the late 1970s, Snowden relocated to M Street in Washington, where she resides to this day. It was during this period that she composed her M Street series, which delves into the resilience of the people she encountered amidst displacement, migration, and gentrification. The series predominantly features single-figure paintings, showcasing Snowden's distinctive depictions of expressive bodies, lyrical extremities, and enlarged, expressive hands. Executed with thick impasto strokes of acrylic and oil pastel on Masonite, each artwork is named after an individual whom Snowden encountered in her neighborhood of Shaw, Washington, D.C. Set against backgrounds devoid of external references, the heavily rendered figures emerge through a bold color palette that ranges from dark and earthy tones to vibrant and emotive hues. Snowden's subjects, many of whom experienced transient lives, unemployment, and disenfranchisement, inhabit a restricted compositional frame, where the figure takes on both formal and profoundly psychological dimensions.
