MONMOUTH, Ill. — "Dreams of Iron and Steel," an exhibit of
surrealistic paintings by East Peoria artist Todd Snyder, will be on
display Sept. 23 through Oct. 31 in Monmouth College’s Len G. Everett
Gallery in Hewes Library.
A gallery talk by the artist will be held Oct. 31 at 2 p.m.,
followed by a reception until 4 p.m. in the gallery. The exhibit,
gallery talk and reception are free and open to the public.
Snyder, a 1986 graduate of the Rocky Mountain College of Art and
Design in Denver, has had his work accepted and exhibited in a variety
of juried local, regional, national and international venues, as well as
displayed in solo and group shows.
Although he is basically self-taught, Snyder said he continually
strives to perfect his art and technique through experimentation with
and implementation of the techniques of the Old Masters, whose work he
says he greatly admires. His paintings, he says, are "updated" with
modern local urban and industrial motifs.
"Since the late 1980s my work has involved the creation of paintings
and drawings
pertaining to a kind of ‘industrial surrealism’ in which urban
images, with and without figures, are synthesized from a combination of
imagination and reality, sometimes directly drawn on location, derived
from slides, prints and digital pictures or a mix thereof," Snyder said.
"My art is technically well-crafted, using traditional realist
techniques that fuse into my own
‘magic realism’ when completed. Works in the same vein are also in
development with looser, more ‘expressionist’ brush strokes, bolder
color and distortion."
Snyder said his intention is to create an atmosphere of "ambiguity
and tension" through the use of "broken narrative, leaving the viewer
with an unresolved outcome, which mirrors our increasingly complicated
and surreal world."
Snyder is a member of the Peoria Art Guild, the Illinois Art League,
the Chicago Artists’ Coalition, the Contemporary Art Center and
Artspartners of Central Illinois. Web sites featuring online galleries
of his work include
www.caconline.org,
www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk and
www.afonline.artistsspace.org.
The Everett Gallery is open during regular library hours: Monday
through Thursday,
8 a.m. to midnight; Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5
p.m., and Sunday, noon to midnight.
