Joan Snyder
Joan Snyder with The Stripper, 1973. Image courtesy of the artist.
Joan Snyder is a morning person. Whether she’s in Brooklyn or Woodstock, the 84-year-old artist wakes up at 5 a.m.—“if not earlier”—on any given day. She makes tea, eats breakfast, hangs out with her partner Maggie, a retired judge, and does the crossword puzzle. Then she heads to the studio. Sitting in her Upstate atelier, Snyder admits hers is a hermetic life. “The pandemic was perfect for me,” she adds with a laugh. “I didn’t have to go anywhere or see anyone. I could just paint every day with absolutely no interruptions.”
Art has been a solace for six decades. Before her Whitney Biennial inclusions, before her Guggenheim Fellowship, before selling out solo shows, Snyder was an anxious sociology student at Douglass College. Then she discovered painting. “It was literally like speaking for the first time,” she recalls. “I could say what I wanted to say.” The studio and the canvas are still a refuge: “This is [where] I feel best. I love making paintings—I love it more than doing almost anything [else].”
There is one thing for which Snyder will readily leave her ivory tower: live music. She’s been a fan of Philip Glass’s forever. (“He was our plumber in the ’70s,” she deadpans, recalling the scantily equipped Mulberry Street loft she shared with her ex, the late photographer Larry Fink. “[Philip] was working with his family’s business while he was making Einstein on the Beach.”) She spent the year of 1992 listeningto Mozart’s Great Mass while grieving her mother. And she makes regular pilgrimages to Woodstock’s Maverick Concert Hall for classical performances. It’s there, in “our Tanglewood,” that many of Snyder’s paintings begin. “Listening to live music inspires me more than going to a museum,” she says.
Read full article at culturedmag.com.