Painting/Drawing Intensive: Strategies and Dialogues in Contemporary Art

Instructor: Mary Snowden
SF / PNTDR–370 / 15 sessions
Prerequisite: Drawing 1 or equivalent
June 3-21, Mon.–Fri., 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

This studio class is open to all levels -- with students instructed on the basis of their own abilities. For beginners the class covers color and composition, as well as the basic techniques of oil and acrylic painting. The instructor, Mary Snowden, has extensive experience in watercolor, oil, acrylic, and collage and works with students in whatever painting medium or style they prefer. Snowden has also worked both realistically and abstractly and can share approaches and techniques relevant to both.

Students become familiar with the current state of painting, through art publications, power point presentations, and possibly a visit or two to a local artists studio.

Students who take this class for diversity credit also investigate the vast diversity of artists in contemporary painting, spanning race, gender identity, and national origins, and some of the ideas and issues that these artists address in their work. There may be brief reading assignments specifically for these students. This separate track shares in the main conceptual and technical pursuits of the class.

This course satisfies Beginning or Intermediate Painting, a Diversity Studies studio, or a studio elective.

Read a Huffington Post article about Mary Snowden.

Mary Snowden was born in Pennsylvania, received her BA Degree in Art History from Brown University and her MA in Painting from UC Berkeley. She is currently Professor Emeritus at CCA and living in New England.

Snowden has taught at CCA for over 40 years. She has shown extensively both locally and nationally. In 1974 she was the first woman to win the SECA Award from the San Francisco Museum. She is in numerous collections including the Oakland Museum, the Nevada Museum of Art, and MONCA { Museum of Northern California Art}, and publications, including "Epicenter: San Francisco Bay Area Art Now" published in 2002.

Snowden had a retrospective at Shasta College in Northern California in 2010 and a one person show at the Braunstein-Quay Gallery in 2011. Recently she was included in the show Small Paintings at the Lora Schlesinger Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, March, 2012 and the show Animalia at the Gail Severn Gallery in Ketchum, Idaho, October 2012. At present she is included in the show Artful Animals at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

New York Studio

• For undergraduates this course satisfies a studio elective; for graduates a gradwide elective or Fine Arts seminar requirement.

Iceland: Drawing from Nature

• For undergraduates, this course satisfies a studio elective or an Upper Division Interdisciplinary studio requirement.
• For painting undergraduates, this course satisfies compositional studies or workshop units.
• For graduate students, this course satisfies a gradwide elective or studio practice.