The portrayals in this exhibition are inscribed with Snowden's sense of identity. On the subject of being a black artist, she had said that some people expect African American artists to make work about one thing and one thing only: being black. She counters: "To be an African American artist, especially a female artist, is a political statement. This opened me up to abstraction." In other words, she is a political artist, but maintains the right to select her vehicle of expression.
As a self-defined abstract artist, she would ultimately choose to make work that is less cool and more colorful than Phantom, [a work in which there is some color, but, with the whiteness of the ground, the color exists to delineate one type of form from another], work more inscribed with the ethos of Matisse - and the notion that "a painting should be like a comfortable armchair." In short, she believed that painting is self-reflexive and primarily concerned with aesthetics.
“In her ‘Chronicle’ drawings Gilda endeavored to make a record of her existence devoid of any facial features or identifying physical traits, except for her profile and the interplay of her hair. In this she was able to strip down her visual narrative to include only the impression of her existence in space and the energy of her light expressed through her use of color.”
—SENGHOR REID
Exhibition Catalogue
