Artist statement by Donald Sam Sneeder whose exhibition continues in the gallery.
“I think of myself as an abstract painter, though not in the conventional sense. After the initial impact of recognizable imagery, it is the shapes, design and color that appeal to me. I use a lot of pattern and stylized objects combining the two. The two-dimensional backgrounds are as important as the subjects who often disappear into each other.
I want my work to have movement and energy. I’m always trying to make it fun for me and the viewer while conveying to them the sense of pleasure that I got creating each piece. I don’t really know where my work is going and I don’t want to be pigeonholed, either in my style, technique or subject matter. It just continues.
I’ve never found, until recently, a style or look that expresses the way I see things. It always had the look of – “it’s been done before”. In the past ten years I’ve been developing and expanding a technique I call Laminated Acrylic. The image is painted directly on glass in layers. Later the painting is “pulled” from the glass by adhering it to canvas. The finished painting is then stretched like any ordinary canvas.”