My Mountain Childhood

AMANDA SNYDER (1894-1980) was a prominent Pacific Northwest painter for more than forty years. She worked in every medium and her subjects were diverse-portraits, birds, clowns, still lifes, landscapes, abstracts. Her formal training was brief. She took a few courses at the Portland Art Museum, and also studied for a year with Sidney Bell, a Londoner who painted in the tradition of the Royal Academy. Mr. Bell praised her sense of color and her great natural gift in drawing. But during most of her career she learned by doing, by exploring on her own. From beginnings in realism, Amanda's work grew into a vigorous impressionism. An inventory of her work identifies more than 800 oil, pastel, collage, watercolor, encaustic and sculpture pieces, and 80 prints (woodcuts, linoleum cuts, and collagraphs). She had 32 one-person shows during her lifetime. Two were major exhibitions at the Portland Art Museum (in 1950 and 1964). Three were at Reed College: in 1950 (24 paintings); in 1954 (portraits, clowns, birds, and sunflowers); and in 1957 (all collages). She was a regular contributor to regional exhibitions, including the Annuals at the Seattle and Portland Art Museums, where she had entries from 1940 into the 1970s. She said of her work: "My inspiration comes from shapes and colors. I see beauty and design in 'every-day' things in my home and garden. My greatest pleasure is to produce paintings which communicate a love of simple life."