Statement

My recent paintings and works on paper draw from a symbolic language for weather patterns used for maritime navigation––consisting of elemental geometric forms. As I engage with this language over time it changes––through this process I explore cognition, memory, and embodied experience.

I source mineral and organic pigments from my surroundings and process them to make paint; these materials are vessels for memory and references to place. Geometric shapes overlap to create new forms which I then repeat and transform again. I play with the shift of perspective between positive and negative space, the suggested routes for the eye to follow, and the vibration of parallel lines. I combine these elements to create work about the space generated by a painting and the two-way experience of witnessing.

The rhythmic and repetitive mark-making present in my paintings and works on paper carries the memory of the movement of my hand across the page or panel, the lines shifting from dark to light as the paintbrush leaves its trace. Bright or synthetic colors on grounds of earth pigment serve as beacons or signs and punctuate the rhythmic line work. These paintings and works on paper display an imperfect symmetry, evoking the mutable body as it traverses time and space.

Through my work I navigate relationships: between myself and the artwork; the artwork and the viewer; an event and my memory of that event; a word and the object or idea it references; and between my body and the world I inhabit. In this sense my work operates as a mirror, a translation device, and a map.

Bio

Laura Josephine Snyder (b.1983, Charlottesville, VA) is a visual artist whose work explores cognition, memory, and embodied experience through a material-driven practice. She has shown her work nationally and internationally, including in Asheville, North Carolina, Mexico City, México, and Bogotá, Colombia. In 2024-25, she had solo exhibitions at Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, Virginia and Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. Her work is held in numerous private and corporate collections. Snyder undertook artist residencies at JOYA AiR, Cortijada los Gázquez, Vélez Blanco, Spain in 2018 and at New City Arts Initiative in Charlottesville in 2014. She has a MFA from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM) and a BFA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design.