Doug Snow has been credited with bringing the New York School to Utah. While he was not the only artist to study the AbEx artists in situ and bring their techniques and outlook back with him, he was certainly one of the first; and, with the early recognition he garnered and the teaching position he held at the University of Utah, one of the most influential. Two years after his death, his long-time friend Frank McEntire has curated a retrospective exhibit of Snow’s work, installed in two Salt Lake City locations. At the UMFA, the vibrant colors and dynamic compositions of Snow’s canvases, dating from 1977 to 2004, hold their own in the expansive space of the museum’s Great Hall. The Salt Lake Art Center’s street level gallery provides a more intimate setting as well as a broader perspective: you are forced closer to the canvases so that they surround and overwhelm, while the chronology of the works begins with some of his early pieces from the 1950s and continues throughout his career, including the canvas left on his easel at the time of his death, now titled “Final Light: October ’09, 2009.”
What Snow learned in New York served him well for his long painting career, but it’s evident from this retrospective that the most powerful and enduring influence on the artist was the landscape of the West. . .
Read the full review in the September 2011 edition of 15 Bytes.
The founder of Artists of Utah and editor of its online magazine, 15 Bytes, Shawn Rossiter has undergraduate degrees in English, French and Italian Literature and studied Comparative Literature in graduate school before pursuing a career in art.
Categories: Exhibition Reviews
