Malik I

About the Work

From the Artist

This was a fun print representing the young life of my son and a child's view—the first work that I've done since his murder. I don't know when I would have worked if it had not been for the influence—[the] print [equals] joy, water, strength, growth, [and] young maturing.
_{—From Brandywine Workshop and Archives records}

For more than five decades, Sylvia Snowden has created vibrantly abstract works. Her palette ranges from dark and earthy to bright and artificial, and she incorporates textures with undulating forms. About her exuberant use of color in the work, Snowden says, “My mother was attracted to color, and I grew up in a home with the use of strong color.

Snowden’s improvisational painting style “comes from within, not an outside force to change styles,” says the artist. “Although I am able to paint in different styles, as I learned in the thorough training at Howard University, expressionism is my style. It is a communication between the canvas and me, which is governed by the intellectual and emotional states acting as one, a unification; examination of the subject matter and its treatment, figurative or without figure.
_{—Excerpted from https://nmwa.org/blog/nmwa-exhibitions/artist-spotlight-sylvia-snowden/, accessed on 7-27-2021}