Karen Snouffer exhibiting abstract art at Ohio State Faculty Club

On Jan 30, 2022

Karen Snouffer’s paintings and wall sculptures in “Seeking Joy” are lively, vibrantly colorful and without exception, abstract.

The title of her exhibit at the Ohio State University Faculty Club refers to her process and its outcome — and the reaction, she hopes, of viewers.

“Because of what we’ve all been experiencing these last few years — socially, politically, medically — I think seeking joy is what I’ve been doing in using so much color and movement,” Snouffer said. “Am I making joyful objects or is the joy in the process? The joy is also up to the viewer.”

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The common denominators of the 30-some works in the exhibit are the use of architectural images and an abundance of contrasting and complementary colors. Snouffer, a Gambier resident and professor emeritus at Kenyon College, said she is frequently inspired by buildings and sights from places she has been to at home and abroad.

She created “Scaffold,” for instance, after a trip to Rome where building projects involving scaffolding seemed to be everywhere. The acrylic painting, also built with stickers, glue and ink, presents clusters of exuberant flourishes in orange, black and yellow — as well as a scaffold-like symbol.

The large “Apostrophe,” (72 by 42 inches) presents an animated apostrophe shape against an orange field in the top left portion of the canvas.

A smaller painting, “Red Boat,” shows what may or may not be the red vessel as the central figure surrounded by block-like shapes in a variety of colors.

Snouffer, 75, who taught painting and drawing and has worked in figurative art, said she is committed now to abstraction, a genre she finds more creatively challenging and free.

She cites neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel’s theories involving the viewing of abstract art versus figurative works. With figurative art, images draw the viewer’s memory to people, places or things he or she can recall. With abstract art, the viewer is compelled to draw upon their imagination to decide what the artwork means.

“I love that different people see different things in my work, and I love that sometimes they spend time with a painting,” Snouffer said.

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Snouffer also clearly enjoys the materials of her work. In “Totter” and “Duck Under,” she employs wisps of cut paper in black, yellow and gray — and sometimes even black glitter — to fashion motion-filled wall hangings. Yellow, she said, “can be a joyful color or it can indicate caution and fear — and it works artistically with black and gray.”

Many more materials are found in the wall sculpture “Push Out,” a black-and-white relief filled with lacy paper, black fuzz, a black-and-white checkerboard and even replicas of cicada wings.

As always, Snouffer invites her viewers to discern meaning in her works. She has studied and explored the chaos theory and enjoys the notion of and introducing contradictory themes in her work. She is relentlessly curious and experimental with materials and themes, all of which contribute to the delight she finds in making art.

As a septuagenarian, she says, “I plan to be doing this for another 20 years.”