“Snyder prompts us to reconsider the mythic, moral and often perversely irrational nature of ingrained cultural and religious histories. (His) strikingly eccentric work ultimately returns us to the innate dualities that constitute both our individual and collective selves”
Sarah S. King - Art in America
Gerry Snyder (b. 1953, Idaho) grew up in a small town where he started painting when he was 12. At age 16 he was kicked out of high school and for the next 13 years worked around the Northwest at a series of jobs that included fighting forest fires, driving semi trucks, crewing a fishing boat to Alaska, working in and around the oil fields in Wyoming, digging graves, landscaping, bartending, etc. Throughout this time Snyder would set aside 4-6 months each year to paint full time. He was largely self-taught until an industrial accident in his late 20’s led him to the University of Oregon where he received a BFA in Painting (1986). He went on to NYU for an MA in Art & Media (1988) where he studied Video Art with Peter Campus and Painting with Marcia Hafif. In addition to his studio practice Snyder had a side career in academia where he was the Director of Summer Visual Arts Program at NYU, Vice President/Dean of Academic Affairs at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Chair of the Art Department at the College of Santa Fe, Dean of Pratt’s School of Art and Distinguished Professor at the Fulbright’s College’s School of Art at the University of Arkansas.
Snyder’s work was shown intermittently between his first exhibition at age 22 when Henry Hopkins, Director of SF MoMA, included him in an exhibition in 1976 at the Boise Art Museum, and when Larry Rinder, Curator of Contemporary Art for the Whitney Museum of American Art included him in their 2002 Biennial. Since then his work has had wider, but still limited exposure, in solo shows at the Claire Oliver Gallery, NY, the New Mexico Museum of Art, NM, the Museum of Modern Art Gallery in Sofia, Bulgaria, the Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery of Contemporary at Lewis & Clark College, Oregon and the Center for Contemporary Art Santa Fe. His work has been included in a number of group shows including the 2004 Visual Arts Biennale in Serbia, Apex Art Gallery, NY, Site Santa Fe, NM, Islip Art Museum, NY, Ise Cultural Foundation, NY, the Bill Mayne Gallery, NY et. Al. Snyder’s work can be found in the the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, de Young Museum San Francisco, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the New Mexico Museum of Art.
“The subject of Snyder’s withering gaze are the leading culprits of our current worrisome condition: fundamentalist religion, white supremacist, nationalism, and hetero-normative patriarchy. He has chosen to live outside of main art centers and, in part because of this, has not developed a reputation thus far that places him in the midst of contemporary art discourse. I call his situation paradoxical because, from his marginal position, Snyder aims at the heart of both art history and the contemporary scene. His art is more sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and relevant to contemporary issues that that of most of his urbane peers.” Larry Rinder, ‘American Idyll’ Exhibition Catalog - 2007