Joan Snyder

She began more explicitly incorporating symbols and text, as the paintings took on a more complex materiality. These early works were included in the 1973 and 1981 Whitney Biennials and the 1975 Corcoran Biennial. Snyder's paintings are narratives of both personal and communal experiences. Through an individual approach and persistent experimentation with technique and materials, Snyder has extended the expressive potential of abstract painting.

The field of work recorded is painting. Work by Joan Snyder is recorded in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston and The Phillips Collection. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship, MacArthur Fellows Program and National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.

• Name — Joan Snyder • Born — 16 April 1940 • Birthplace — Highland Park, New Jersey • Spouse — Margaret "Maggie" Cammer • Awards — MacArthur Fellow; Guggenheim Fellow; National Endowment for the Arts Fellow; Arts & Letters Award in Art Recipient • Field — Painting • Training — Douglass College, Rutgers University

Joan Snyder was born on April 16, 1940, in Highland Park, New Jersey. She received her BA in Sociology, from Douglass College in 1962 and her MFA from Rutgers University in 1966.

While living on a New Jersey farm in 1962, Snyder worked in a studio on the Raritan River in New Brunswick, creating some of her earliest paintings of farm and landscape scenes, as well as expressionist portraits. In the mid to late 60's she was working explicitly with the idea of female sensibility, using materials in her paintings such as lentil seeds, flocking, thread, glitter and gauze. Snyder describes her processes involving non-art materials as a type of ritual act for the painting. Snyder's ideas often take form in her paintings through other means other than paint such as music, poetry and words to further push the intent of her pieces. These works eventually led to Snyder's seminal stroke paintings in the late 60's and early '70's. Snyder worked alongside artists such as Mary Heilmann, Jennifer Bartlett and Harriet Korman during the 1960s, all of whom were attempting to bring more process into their art making.

In 1971, Snyder founded the Mary H. Dana Women Artist Series, "the oldest continuous running exhibition space in the United States dedicated to making visible the work of emerging and established contemporary women artists." She was a founding member of Heresies, a Feminist Publication On Art and Politics, alongside artists and critics including Ida Applebroog, Joyce Kozloff, Lucy Lippard, Nina Yankowitz, Joan Braderman, Sue Heinemann and Miriam Schapiro.

In 1969, Snyder married photographer Larry Fink. She gave birth to their daughter, Molly, in 1979. They were divorced in 1985.