Oregon Coast Council for the Arts (OCCA) welcomes Coos County artist Pat Snyder’s “Coastal Textures” in the Coastal Oregon Visual Artists Showcase in the Newport Visual Arts Center through March 27.
Snyder’s work in acrylics, collage, and printmaking explores the essence of the southern Oregon coast where he has lived for more than 40 years.
He lives in Coos Bay where he is well recognized and respected for his art and as the former art teacher at the local Marshfield High School. His teaching career began in 1967 and included college-level instruction at Southwest Oregon Community College.
Through his work he strives to touch the viewer with the organic energy and beauty of the area by interpreting nature’s surfaces, light and depth. Sometimes the viewer is treated to a view of the undergrowth, and the rusting and weathering of artificial surfaces.
“Living within and observing our diverse South Coast landscape has allowed me to feel and interpret the environment while concentrating and experimenting with acrylic mediums mixed with collage and other supportive materials,” he states in his artist statement. “…my studies, sketches, and observations gradually transform back and forth from realism to abstraction as I study and look deeper into the exciting and always changing structures of nature.”
Since he retired from the classroom in 1998, he has been a working artist and volunteers at the Coos Art Museum. He has shown extensively in Oregon and Washington, most recently with a solo exhibit at Lane Community College.
Pat Snyder is the 16th artist represented in the showcase, an exhibition space specifically for mid-career artists who live in the seven counties on the Oregon Coast served by OCCA, the regional arts council. A video about each artist can be viewed in the Visual Artists Archive on the touch screen computer across from the showcase.