Joan Snyder

The Great Women Artists

In this special episode of The Great Women Artists, host Katie Hessel interviews the legendary painter Joan Snyder in her Brooklyn studio. T

Key takeaways

• Joan Snyder transitioned from studying sociology at Rutgers University to painting under the mentorship of Billy Pritchard.
• The artist cites profound musical influences including Nina Simone, Arvo Part, and Philip Glass as drivers for her emotional expression.
• Snyder was a founding member of the 'heresies' group and was active in the 1970s women's art movement.
• Her 'stroke paintings' were inspired by observing delicate drips on a wood wall in her Mulberry Street loft.
• While teaching at Stony Brook University, Snyder pushed for curricula that prioritized emotional expression over traditional holiday-themed crafts.

Main topics

• Artistic evolution and technique
• Influence of music on painting
• The 1970s women's art movement

Notable quotes

The strokes in my paintings speak of my life and experiences.

Conclusion

A profound look into the intersection of music, sociology, and visual

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Hello and welcome back to the Grey Woman Artist podcast for this very special bonus episode with the legendary painter Joan Snyder. Just before we get to this episode, I am very pleased to say that this series is supported by the Levitt Collection, a vast and varied art collection which in the last eight years has become entirely focused on works by women artists. You can find this collection on view at the Museum Femme in Mujan in France, the first museum in the world outside of the USA. to have a permanent collection dedicated to major female artists and which is spearheaded by Christian Levitt. Located in the heart of the historic village of Rougin-les-Cannes in the south of France, Femme features an incredible collection of nearly 100 works that has just been re-humped for summer 2026. From Leonora Carrington to Anna Mendieta, Alice Neel, Lee Miller, Joan Snyder, Frida Kahlo, Elaine de Kooning and so many more. This impressive collection of paintings, sculptures and photographs highlights the brilliance of women who have played pivotal roles in shaping some of the major artistic movements. It's 30 minutes away from Leeds Airport and is open every single day. For further information and bookings, please visit www.famm.com. I hope you enjoy this episode. Speaker 2 (1:23) Hello everyone and welcome to the Great Women Artists podcast with me, Katie Hessel. Some of you might know me from the Great Women Artists, an Instagram account I set up in October 2015 which celebrates female artists on a daily basis ranging from young graduates to old masters. Well, in a similar fashion to the Instagram, this podcast is all about celebrating female artists from a variety of backgrounds and histories. And I'm so excited to be interviewing artists on their career or artists, writers, curators or general art lovers on the woman artist who means most to them. What I want this podcast to do is celebrate female artists in all different capacities. So you, the listener, can gain a look into the greatest female artists working now or from art history. Speaker 2 (2:13) I am so excited to say that my guest on the Great Women Artists podcast is the esteemed painter Joan Snyder. Hailed for her large-scale gestural canvases that pulsate with colour, line, text, image and are often layered with, buried in or implode with images of flowers, faces or bodies. Snyder's all-encompassing works are nothing but electric. Sometimes large-scale. with brushstrokes that populate the canvas, like gemstones or musical scores, with a whole range of keys. Look at Snyder's work for a while and it's like whole worlds emerge. Simultaneously soft but violent, beautiful yet aggressive, her works can evoke every season of emotion. Just as she once wrote in her journal in 1972, the strokes in my paintings speak of my life and experiences. They are sometimes soft, they sometimes laugh, and are often violent. They bleed and cry. I speak of love and anguish, of fear and mostly of hope. Born in 1940, Snyder came to art not straight away, but by chance during her studies at Rutgers University when she was studying sociology in preparation for a career in social work. But it was under the mentorship of Billy Pritchard that she pivoted to art, showing just how important teachers can be. Moving to New York City in 1968, where she remains today, with spells in Pennsylvania or her house surrounded by bean fields in Eastport on the south shore of Long Island, today we meet Joan in her Brooklyn studio, where she remains one of the legendary artists of her time. A recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award and a museum collections all over the world, Snyder... at 85, nearly 86, is painting more than ever, and this summer will take to Paris for her upcoming show, Earth Song, at Dadaist Roadpack Gallery, and I cannot wait to find out more. Joan Snyder, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? I'm doing well. Well, thank you so much for having me in your studio. It's amazing to be here surrounded by your paintings. I feel like I'm in a Joan Snyder universe. It's extraordinary. Joan, when I am witness to your paintings, it's like... Seeing something that is alive. They are like these effervescent, dazzling universes with cell-gem-like forms that rain all over the surface. They could be microscopic images of the inside of the body or zoomed-out images of Earth. While they're beautiful, they are also imbued with so much depth and emotion. They contain all the seasons. So I want to start by asking you, how do you hope for people to feel when they're in front Speaker 1 (4:40) of your Speaker 2 (4:40) work? Oh Speaker 1 (4:40) my God. How do I hope for people to feel? I don't think I think about that. I don't. I mean, I think people get very moved by the work and they react to it and they, generally speaking, really like it. But I don't think I have that in mind, how people will feel when they look at the work. I mean, I know how I feel when I'm making the work. That's sort of a different thing. How do you feel when you're making the work? Well, you know, I have a lot of music in my head. I mean, I'm always listening. to music while I work. And I think the music kind of is what informs me and drives me and somehow gets into what I'm feeling. Or, you know, I listen to a lot of cantatas and requiems and vocal music. Bach, Arvo Part, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson. I love Laurie Anderson. But a lot of vocal music, Renee Fleming. I mean, just Nina Simone. I think I learn more from listening to music. than I do at looking at art because it just speaks to me emotionally. I mean, most art doesn't necessarily speak to me emotionally. And it also is full of structure. It's just completely structured and, you know, the various notes and sharps and flats and the sounds resonate. And sometimes when I'm making a painting, I listen to the same piece over and over and over again for days. just because it's that piece of music that is resonating with me in terms of the painting I'm working on. So, you know, when people look at my work, I don't expect them to hear that music, but that's what I'm hearing when I'm making it. Speaker 2 (6:25) Yeah, it's interesting. I do the same thing, especially Philip Glass's opening. That piece of piano music, when I write, I just have it on repeat. I sort of must have listened to it thousands Speaker 1 (6:34) of times. I love Philip's music. You know, Philip, I've known Philip for... He's not a close friend at all, but I've known him forever because when I lived at 105 Mulberry Street and we moved in to a raw loft, I mean, it had nothing, no plumbing. Philip Glass was our plumber. Speaker 2 (6:51) No. Speaker 1 (6:52) Yeah. He was married, he had two small kids, and he had to earn a living. So it was while he was working on Einstein that he was our plumber. I think that his uncle or his cousin had the business, and he was working for him. That's how I met Philip. Isn't that amazing? Speaker 2 (7:10) Incredible. Speaker 1 (7:11) No, I've always loved his work. Speaker 2 (7:13) And why are you attracted to the medium of paint? I mean, it's so interesting that you say, you know, you look at different artistic sources for inspiration. Why is paint your language? Speaker 1 (7:24) You know, when I was a senior in college, I decided to take a painting course because as a child I had painted a bit and I remember just loving it. And I was kind of serious about it when I was a kid. But then I stopped completely. I was a sociology major in college. I mean, that is how I earned a living for years, doing different kind of working with the anti-poverty programs during that time. But when I was a senior, I decided I wanted to take a painting course. I wanted to paint. I have no idea why, but it was in the back of my mind, and I absolutely had to work really hard to convince the art department to let me take a painting course without taking all the 101 drawing, you know, color theory, whatever you had to do to get to the painting course. But anyway, they let me take a painting course. And, I mean, I loved it. I was painting pictures of, you know, still lifes and paintings of people that I knew and loved. I mean, portraits. And one day my painting teacher came up to me and said, how do you like Javalensky? And I said, I have no idea who Javalensky is because I grew up in a kind of working class family that we never went to a museum. We never... It was very unsophisticated. It didn't have to be because my mother was pretty brilliant. But anyway, it was. I mean, just a working class Jewish family. And the teacher dragged me up to the slide room and showed me German Expressionism, Russian, you know, all kinds of paintings that I totally related to. And he showed me a painting by Yavolinsky that had a man with a pipe that had the same palette that I was using. I had a painting of my brother with a pipe. I mean, it's my first painting. And that's the painting that he saw. And that's the painting that he showed me these. incredible paintings, and that was it. I mean, that was what compelled me to keep painting. And I mean, I was really pretty self-taught forever because I didn't have those beginning classes. I didn't have that structure. I didn't have any of that. So in some ways, I think that served me well. Finally, after painting on my own for several years after college, This is a novel way to get into graduate school. I filled my car up with paintings. The Rutgers MFA program was held on the Douglas campus. I drove up to the art department, knocked on the door of the head of the art department and said, can I show you my paintings? When I think about this, I think it's absolutely outrageous. How old are you, like early 20s or something? I'm in my early 20s. Can I show you my paintings? And he said, well, this is an unusual way to apply to graduate school. So I said, you know, I don't think I had to beg him. I mean, I think he just said, okay, whatever. I brought in my paintings, and he looked at them, and ultimately it was decided that... I could go non-matriculated for one year and if I did well, they would let me into the program, which is exactly what happened. So I ended up getting my MFA in three years. Speaker 2 (10:45) Wow. Speaker 1 (10:46) I know. When I think about that story, I mean, it's kind of incredible. Speaker 2 (10:51) It is amazing. And so when you were young, you know, you said you took art seriously as a kid. I mean, why did you sort of pivot to sociology rather than art in your sort of early life? Well, Speaker 1 (11:03) there was