| Artist Info |
Name:
Nick Snow |
Town
of residence:
Spruce Head Island, Maine |
Brief
Bio:
Nick Snow likes to think of himself as a self-taught
artist. His residence in Florence, Italy, his studies
in Art History at Wesleyan and Harvard, his years as
museum curator, art school administrator and university
lecturer probably have ruined his chance of being taken
as a true primitive. All that exposure, however, did
have a lot to do with establishing his benchmarks.
Nick has been a resident and painter on Spruce Head
Island full time since 1976, or at least as close to
full time painting as building a house, lobstering and
continuing to raise his family allowed. He had spent
every summer of his life on Spruce Head except for his
Navy service in World War II, and, in his fiftieth year
he knew he must return to a life in this area.
Although he draws heavily on the energy of wind and
tides that move the granite walls of his island, he
has resisted (not altogether successfully) being identified
as a “Maine artist”. His father, the poet
Wilbert Snow, was born on White Head Island, a son of
a lifeboatman who served for over thirty years on the
Life Saving Station there. Wilbert Snow was a descendant
of the Snows who settled South Thomaston in 1765, and
he was known as a regionalist poet whose work reflected
the life and language of the coast. Nicholas Snow insists
that his own images “travel”, that is, allow
the viewer to establish for himself or herself the painting’s
sense of mood and place.
Snow sometimes refers to his paintings as evocations,
or even provocations, recalling states of mind as well
as moods and locales. To satisfy him, they should embody
the dynamism and the constancy of change in the natural
world. In his art studies, he focused on the qualities
in both ancient (or classical) and modern art which
have succeeded in capturing light, life and movement.
The fluidity of the medium he employs, combined with
Snow’s penchant for calligraphy, makes the viewer’s
experience variable and absolutely individual. His paintings
respond to every change in both artificial and natural
light, and , he says, they have a presence even in the
dark. They do not hold still. Neither does he.
|
|
|
|
|
Artist's
Statement:
This rudder once served to navigate
a Cape Catboat that belonged to our family in the 30s. It
had belonged to a Unitarian minister friend who did not enjoy
being "tipped up" and so it came to us. Short and
stubby, broad in the beam, it was served by a wooden mast
forward that supported the gaff-and-boom rig. It had a large
sail but was a safe boat tha, left to its own command, volunteere
to go into irons.
Come WWII, the elder sons gone off to war and away, the boat
retired to an undignified life as a container of flowering
plants. I rescued the rudder when I returned to live here
full time and it has stayed with me ever since. Most of the
time it has rested in a dark basement. In recent years it
has come out in the sun. I have enjoyed looking on its aging
face and, now that I have volunteered it as an item of "artistic
interest", I must confess that I rather enjoyed it as
it was, before I enlisted the rudder in a oney raising campaign
for a cause that, to be sre, it would have applauded.
But here it is. In rouge and party colors, perhaps for someone
else to imagine in.
Note: the Rudder as "improved" is of two
minds: one side we have the "Inner Channel" on the
other, the "Outer Channel".
Those who have seen my entry have had difficulty deciding
which side they like best: the darker "Inner Channel"
or the sunnier "Outer Channel". I think of the work
as being "all of a piece" and would like both sides
of the Midget's to be accessible.
| Description of Art Work |
| Dimensions:
26"
x 46" |
| Medium
Used: weathered
wood, acrylic, and metal |
| Title:
"Inner
Channel", "Outer Channel" |
|
 |
|
