ARTIST
STATEMENT
Tova Snyder was born in New York City, to artist parents, and was raised in Israel, Cape Cod and in Rye, New York. She graduated from Yale University and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Tyler School of Art. She studied one year in Rome.
Tova has received several grants beginning with a Lustman Travel Fellowship from Yale in 1982 and the most recent one a 2003 Edwin Abbey mural fellowship from the National Academy of Design.
Her work experience includes public and commercial murals, fresco and ceiling paintings in private homes, trompe l'oeil and restoration work in the United States and in Europe; she has taught art at the American International School in Tel Aviv, was the art director at the Aaron Copland Music and Arts Program in Westchester County, and has done installations of public art at the Nice(France) Jazz Festival as well as at other international music festivals in Italy and Brazil.
Public art and paintings on canvas have been the focus of Tova's professional life. She has a studio in Liguria, Italy and one in the New York area, where she has been exhibiting her 'Roofscapes' series of paintings. Her largest piece of public art is a six story mural off the Grand Concourse in the Bronx, NYC, while her latest one is a permanent installation of faceted glass in the Harrison, NY, train station.
ARTIST STATEMENT
A city is aesthetically defined by it's motion, stability, and complexity of pattern in a limited space. The Italian Roofscapes' series focus on medieval villages that wind inland from the coast of the Italian Riviera, a place where the Apennine mountains meet the Mediterranean Sea. The interlocking layered quality of these hilltop towns ... the intricate interweaving of the twisted alleyways, are enhanced by the patterning of the Mediterranean light. They combine to form what I perceive as a cubist rhythm. The aerial perspective that I use emphasizes their roof top configurations and their integration and containment by the terraced mountainside. Local stone used for all the buildings is viewed by some as chromatically barren. Yet this stone, rich with time-worn texture, catches the different colors and moods of the changing light.
