Move over Breton, Dali and Duchamp – there’s a new name being added to the Surrealist art genre: Bowman’s own Marie Snavely.
Local artist Marie Snavely talks children, life and art
Posted Jan. 31, 2014
By BRYCE MARTIN
Pioneer Editor
Move over Breton, Dali and Duchamp – there’s a new name being added to the Surrealist art genre: Bowman’s own Marie Snavely.
Snavely has steadfastly dedicated her life to her art and has spent equal time spreading her passion for creativity to today’s youth, as a professor of art history at Dickinson State University. Her latest art exhibit, inspired in part by Automatist technique, was displayed in DSU’s Kleinfelter Gallery since Jan. 3.
The 21-piece collection demonstrating Snavely’s Surrealist-inspired craft took nearly two years to complete. It was an artistic pursuit brought on by Snavely’s former art department colleague.
“I told her I was painting these paintings. So, two years ago, she asked me if I wanted to have a show,” Snavely said. “For the last two years, I’ve been working on these paintings so that they would be ready.”
But Snavely’s art career began earlier – when she was only 12 years old.
Her path to becoming a renowned artist and art-enthusiast emerged once Snavely realized it was something she could do, do well and loved doing. She gained a Master’s degree from Northern State University in Aberdeen, S.D. and went on to become an art teacher, in Bowman and Rhame, from where she retired in 2006.
Though, Snavely did not treat her retirement as an ending.
Following her retirement from Bowman and likewise from her positions as art, English, German teacher and librarian in Rhame, Snavely took a full-time position in post-secondary education at DSU, in a place where she was most suited – the art department.
“I’ve been an art teacher basically all my life,” she said. “Every student needs a cheerleader. Every student needs somebody to help them along.”
Teaching at a college level brought much more ability to Snavely’s method, having more time for reflection, to develop her programs and focus on students and the work at a deeper level.
“The way I teach art is as problem solving,” she said. “It really resonates with the students. You build success into every single lesson. Success breeds success.”
Snavely uses her art background and her teaching ability to help students, as a group and individually. She pays close attention upon how to reach them, how she can help them and how to challenge them.
With Snavely focusing much of her life on all things art, some of her passion and artistic drive rubbed off on her children, predominately on her daughter, Sarah.
Sarah, director of the Bowman Regional Public Library, and her mother held a joint art display at DSU in 2011. At that showing, Snavely debuted watercolor paintings and Sarah showed off her sculptures.
Art runs in the Snavely family, but Snavely said she wasn’t sure if it’s due to nature or nurture, an age-old question.
“When you are five years old and you’re sitting around the dinner table and your parents are talking about the Surratt that they’ve seen in the Art Institute of Chicago, or they’re talking about some exhibit at the Metropolitan, or they’re talking about the works of Cezanne, this is what you grow up with – it’s always there. So both my children were very creative and artistic,” she said.
Snavely’s latest exhibit at DSU was a collection of acrylic painting using a limited palate of red, green and gold on square canvases. Snavely employed the “let it happen” technique, which is a basic philosophy that comes out of Automatism and used by the popular Surrealist artists. The philosophy relies on instinctual brush strokes and repetitive movements.
“If you are a basketball player, and you’re standing at the free-throw line, you have practiced throwing free throws, so you know exactly what the arc of the ball should be, you know exactly how much pressure you should put upon that ball,” she said. “You don’t just stand there and start thinking – this is something that is like a sixth sense with you. That’s what I mean by let it happen. I just sort of give the ball the proper push and it goes through the net.”
Her collection also embraced Romanticism ideology, a philosophy that explains the universe and nature is vast and the human is minuscule in relationship to nature. In her paintings, the only evidence of the human seen is the unique brush stroke. No human figures exist in the painted space.
Snavely’s extensive use of a gold color is used to communicate with the ethereal world, such as used in Byzantine and Art Nouveau paintings.
All these techniques and influences led Snavely to create her collection and teach her students the different aspects that go into painting.
Presently, Snavely is working on another 4 foot by 4 foot painting started last weekend. She described her process as spurts of mania rather than a calculated response.
“I put it away for a while and then I come back and I get an idea. I think and think and think about the idea and all of a sudden I have to do it,” she said.
While the Snavely home in Bowman includes an artist studio, Snavely said she does most of her painting in her dining room, which casts the best lighting. She hangs a canvas on her dining room wall and simply paints.
“When I’m usually done, I’ll have to paint the wall,” she said with a laugh.
When Snavely remodeled her home, she said her husband, being very understanding about her love of art, built some gallery space right into the house so there are some long walls where large paintings fit and do not look out of place.
Snavely is planning for an exhibit to be featured at the Bowman library in August.
Having sold one-third of her latest exhibit – her larger paintings selling for $1,800 – she said she’d have to start on new pieces to display.
“I’ve had shows all my career, but this one is one that turned out really well,” she said. “Sometimes I surprise myself.”
