“Mallards Cupped” by Bob Snider, 2023, oil on canvas, 36×48.
ABOUT THE SERIES:
“I love to paint scenes that are based on the natural beauty of outdoor Arkansas. I grew up duck hunting near Stuttgart on Bayou Meto. My dad, uncles and cousins would meet at the Snider farmhouse around 5 a.m. and eat breakfast before putting on our hip boots and wading into the knee-deep water of the bayou. All my uncles were guides and picked ducks daily during the season. But being with my dad, tagging along on quail hunts or any other adventure, are the memories of my youth that I try to make permanent on canvas.”
ARTIST BIO:
Bob Snider was the kid in the back of the classroom drawing pictures of the English teacher. Like most artists, he is very visual and has always looked for the abstract designs in everything from cloud formation to reflections of light in water.
“When I started college, I set out to get a major in art, but realized the world is full of people with more artistic talent, so I got a second major in business.”
It is somewhat ironic that after a 30-year career as an investment banker, (which was preceded by a tour in Washington, D.C., as special assistant to Sen. John L. McClellan), Snider returned to his love of art as his lifetime passion.
He started out in a water media class at the Arkansas Arts Center (now the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts) and had early success in annual exhibitions with the Mid-Southern Watercolorists.
“Being able to take at least two workshops a year MSW taught by world-class artists jump-started my career,” Snider says. “It was during a workshop with Barry Thomas someone asked me if I had ever tried oils. So the next day they provided me oils, brushes and a palette, and I approached the scene on the Arkansas River just like a watercolor, and the painting sold the next week for double the price of my watercolors.”
Today Snider paints in both watercolor and oils, has taught many workshops in both medias, launched a juried art competition and served as a consultant across the country for shows that use his template.
Snider has taken and taught painting workshops in Italy, France and in various locales in the U.S. He has a sizable inventory of paintings that are sold in local galleries as well as in Colorado, California, Georgia and Florida, and he’s involved with many charities such as the AMFA, American Heart Association, CARTI and Arkansas Children’s Hospital.
“It just seems to work out that when I donate a painting, another one sells to a collector.”
With the support of his wife Martha, Snider is happy living the life of an artist in a world full of captivating subjects waiting to be painted.
Snider is a graduate of Ouachita Baptist University and received an MBA from the University of Arkansas. Following two years as an officer in the U.S. Army, he worked in the U.S. Senate and then had a career as an investment banker with Morgan Keegan in Little Rock.
Snider’s work can be seen at Art Group Gallery in Little Rock and Snider Studio and Gallery in Roland, which is open by appointment and holds two private art sales each year. He has been an artist in residence at the Arkansas Governor’s Mansion, the Oaklawn Jockey Club, UAMS Health Orthopaedics Sports Medicine, Pleasant Valley Country Club and various restaurants.
Find more of Snider’s work locally at Art Group Gallery and his own Snider Studio and Gallery, online at bobsniderfinearts.com and on Facebook and Instagram.