A Bookful of Birds (SIGNED) - Softcover

Amanda Tester Snyder (1894-1980) is known for her paintings of birds, clowns, dolls, still life, houses, and barns as well as for her abstract compositions. Her works-which combine strong forms, vigorous brushwork, and rich color-align her with other early modern painters in Oregon, including her friends C.S. Price and Charles Heaney. She took classes at the Portland Museum Art School in 1917 and studied with Sidney Bell, a portrait painter from England, in 1925. Otherwise, she was self-taught, developing variations of Impressionism and Expressionism as she worked in relative isolation in the basement of her Portland home. She also made blockprints, sculptures, pottery, and collages. During her life, she exhibited in thirty-two solo and numerous group exhibitions. Snyder's works are owned by the Oregon Historical Society, Portland Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Reed College, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, and corporate and private collectors. In looking at the birds of Amanda Snyder, we see that she has other concerns than the scientific, decorative, exotic, or the symbolic. She is concerned with the individual world of that individual bird, the spiritual aspects of the bird. Dignity, courage, determination, awkwardness, obedience, trust are only some of the attributes and attitudes that Amanda Snyder finds in her friends, the birds, and she brings them to our attention simply and directly in this delightful bookful of birds.