Charlotte Snook

Charlotte Snook creates small oil on board paintings, rich with colour, composition and light. The notion of human folly is integral to her practice. Her heroes are artists who have dealt with this notion throughout the history of art. She often draws on and annexes visual and literary references from Grandville to Goya and Shakespeare to Flaubert and reworks them into a personal iconography. Ideas are condensed into an intense small-scale arena of her paintings.

Her art allows for the apocalyptic nature of the world . ‘They are concerned with a loss of paradise,’ Charlotte says. ‘It’s all about the painting: light, colour, contrast, the composition and brushstrokes. I try to set a narrative without there being one.’ Her drawings, which can be huge, underpin her practice and show what an accomplished, knowledgeable and insightful artist she is. Dana Brass writes: ‘The work takes us to the edge and asks us to question what we see. As a viewer one looks for a safe place to rest - places to identify and name. Snook gives us a platform to jump from … but the excitement of these work is there is no place to truly land or settle.’

Charlotte trained at Hornsey School of Art and Royal College of Art. Until 2009 she was a senior lecturer at Central St Martins College of Art and Design. Recently Charlotte has exhibited her work in group shows at Jerwood Gallery, Hastings (now Hastings Contemporary) and Bermondsey Project Space. In 2018 she held her second solo exhibition with Sarah O’Kane, titled Studio Paintings and Other Stories.