Sage
Artist
Gilda Snowden
(American, 1954-2014)
Date1979
MediumEncaustic, pigment on canvas
Dimensions24 × 24 in. (61 × 61 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineGift of the Gilda Snowden Estate, 2018
Object numberUAC6633
DescriptionGilda Snowden remains in Detroit one of the most beloved artists of the Cass Corridor movement. Her work, although often highly abstracted, is also deeply personal and explores themes of race and gender. Snowden has never been beholden to only one medium, instead exploring a multitude of materials and styles which all have been multi-layered and adept at telling stories of personal experience. Snowden’s work Sage from 1979 evokes the sensation of working the earth. Layers of paint take on the appearance of layers of sediment; clay, sod, moist compost. Textured swaths of green sweep through rich browns in the same way delicate moss tangles itself with soil. A single slash of dark paint cuts into the middle of the painting as if the thin edge of a shovel has just been carefully pulled out. There is a desire to push one’s fingers into the crevice and turn over what could only be rich, dark earth below. It is romantic without being overbearing, showing a tender relationship with oneself and the world that one is charged with tending.
Gilda Snowden was born in Detroit in 1954 and earned her BFA in Advertising Design and Painting in 1977 and her MFA in Painting in 1979 from Wayne State University. Her work has been exhibited across the United States and resides in distinguished collections such as that of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Snowden went on to become a professor of Fine Arts at the College for Creative Studies where she taught for thirty-one years.
Written by Samantha Hohmann
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