Statement

In my work I explore the intersection of memory and place through visual abstraction. I inquire into the ways in which the signs and symbols found in our physical environment–from signal flags to road signs to the smell of rain–influence cognition and movement. The imagery in my recent work is drawn from analog charts of ocean currents and a guide to weather symbols used for maritime navigation. These symbols conform a language which I reference and transform through a material-driven process.

The rhythmic mark-making in much my work 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. I often source mineral and organic pigments from my surroundings and process them to make paint. Bright or contrasting colors on grounds of earth pigment serve as beacons or signs and punctuate the continuous rhythmic flow present in works such as the Traveling Drawings–as I question how we in turn make our mark on our environment.

The Traveling Drawings can be folded and unfolded like old road maps as I work on them, creating creases and wear on the paper. In referencing maps, I point to the history of cartography and counter cartographies, and I reinsert memory and the body into the space of the map. The drawings begin as two stenciled lines, mirror images of one another. I slowly build the drawings, working from one side of the paper and then the other until the undulating lines join and overlap. In this meeting of the two sides new shapes are formed, offering answers to the questions posed by the first stenciled pencil lines. The shapes which emerge in the drawing process speak to the Surrealist notion of a “third mind” or a “third memory” created in the space between an event and its retelling.

The visual disruption created by the overlapping lines causes the work to vibrate before the viewer’s eyes. Creased and stained, these works display an imperfect symmetry which evokes the body as it traverses time and space. By looking to the slow-moving cycles present in the natural world and sourcing many of my materials in nature, I engage with place and open-up space from which new patterns of thought and movement can emerge.

Bio

Laura Josephine Snyder (b.1983, Charlottesville, VA) is a visual artist whose work explores the intersection of memory and place 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, 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.