Looking out

Stephen Snoddy was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1959. He lives and works in Manchester. Snoddy is stimulated by a passion for pictorial renewal: he incessantly seeks new shapes and structures to enrich the language of abstract painting. Particularly fascinated by the work of Henri Matisse and Richard Diebenkorn, as well as the Minimalism of Brice Marden and Mark Rothko, Snoddy invites us to consider structure as the absolute key to contemplate visual art. His compositions are determined by a high standard of exactingness in what is a complex conceptual process - one that must be, neither purely formal, nor totally accidental. The painting must evolve naturally, organically, and by subtle gestural mastery. By using layers of paint to create pentimento, he applies delicate glazes, thus avoiding impasto, and resulting in exceptionally lyrical surfaces. Divulging a passionate and yet methodical will to play on permutations of lines and geometric shapes, Snoddy's paintings thus generate multiple possibilities. Alternating between vertical and horizontal compositions, the artist invites the viewer to observe the relationship between his canvases and discern the slight variations from one to the other. Snoddy's paintings work as polyptychs and series, according to specific architectural structures and clearly defined colour schemes. Showing app. fifty paintings in acrylic, gouache, monotype, and watercolour on paper mounted on blockboard.