Elizabeth Snipes : News

"New Ground"

Solo Exhibition of original work at Grant & Little in Atlanta

https://www.grantandlittle.com/elizabeth-snipes-new-ground

@grantandlittle

"Elizabeth‘s work is full of movement and emotion, capturing intimate, yet universally familiar moments. New Ground is a celebration of the re-emergence of communal activities and human interaction. The bold and saturated color schemes evoke a range of moods from quiet and contemplative to joyful and exuberant.

The relationship between each element within her work is a metaphor for human connection. Each decision including direction of line, color, and layering of media are thoughtfully made in service to the process. Some marks are ultimately covered or left behind while others are visible in the work’s final form. Each mark is a new beginning, reframing all prior layers. This slow accumulation of layers over time represents the certainty of transience in life. Some experiences remembered and some forgotten, but all essential to the understanding of the present."

New Ground

A solo exhibition of new work by Elizabeth Snipes-Rochester

Grant & Little Gallery, Atlanta, GA

"Elizabeth‘s work is full of movement and emotion, capturing intimate, yet universally familiar moments. New Ground is a celebration of the re-emergence of communal activities and human interaction. The bold and saturated color schemes evoke a range of moods from quiet and contemplative to joyful and exuberant.

The relationship between each element within her work is a metaphor for human connection. Each decision including direction of line, color, and layering of media are thoughtfully made in service to the process. Some marks are ultimately covered or left behind while others are visible in the work’s final form. Each mark is a new beginning, reframing all prior layers. This slow accumulation of layers over time represents the certainty of transience in life. Some experiences remembered and some forgotten, but all essential to the understanding of the present."

- Ashley Chavis, Art Director at Grant & Little

"Groundless"

Artist Statement – Groundless

Elizabeth Snipes-Rochester

In my experience, painting is an encounter with urgency - a desperate act and attempt to grasp the present with every mark. It is a way of indulging in the here and now while daring to lean into the fundamental uncertainty of what is to come. I find that the creative process is akin to the human and mothering process. With each process, fundamental uncertainty is the only certain thing. To paint, live and mother is to experience an ongoing process of groundlessness, especially as circumstances change, hard decisions are made, consequences emerge, and the world continues to impose its own challenging parameters. With the Groundless series, I consider for the first time ever, my individual experience as a mother of two young children during the era of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I approach painting and drawing as a tactile and responsive act. While the subject of the figure is my formal starting point, it is also a conceptual vehicle with which I can associate my individual experience. These associations translate into spatial, chromatic, and linear choices - becoming metaphors for vulnerability, relationship, strength, loss, self-perception, and curiosity. Colors are chosen deliberately based on their chromatic and spatial relationships, and in some cases, based on the pigments’ toxicity. Metal leaf appears for the first time in these works as non-spatial, non-representational passages that complicate typically resolved figure/ground relationships.