Sylvia Snowden’s monumental expressionistic paintings hit you in the gut. Bodies arch, hunch and contort, emanating suffering, fear, joy and aspiration. But what really holds your gaze, even more than their misshapen, hyperextended forms painted in gorgeous hues, is their fierce vitality.
At the age of 81, the American artist is having her first major solo show in the UK. The title, M Street on White, takes its name from the road in inner-city Washington DC where Snowden has lived for the past 45 years. Although individually titled after M Street’s residents, the paintings are emphatically not portraits, she insists. “I’m making an effort to show the emotional state,” Snowden says when we meet at Edel Assanti gallery in London. “Because we’re human beings, we all have the same sort of tugs and pushes through life, no matter what the background is, and that’s what I’m painting about.”
