Let it Snow

There are many reasons people create art. Beauty is all around us and artists seek ways to express themselves, perhaps inspired by sunlight dancing on the sand or by birdsong cascading down from the trees or by the ocean kissing the shore.

It is in this natural beauty that Ellie Snow finds inspiration to create her acrylic paintings. The idyllic scenes of nature vary from close-ups of plant life, such as Devil in a Bush/Love in a Mist, to overlapping images of different trees, as seen in Rabbit Hole.

Color plays an important role in Snow’s artwork. The layering and interplay of different colors creates dimension and motion, as if the flowers and plants are blowing softly in an invisible breeze.

Snow says she doesn’t always have total control over the colors she works with.

“That’s part of the emotional piece that is an innate feeling which makes me gravitate towards certain colors,” she says.

Snow starts by selecting color palettes that appeal to her artistic eye, and the painting comes as it is meant to be created.

She painted Rabbit Hole from a photograph she took of her wooded neighborhood, seeing inspiration in the way the branches were “leaning on one another, but also being constricted by one another.” Snow then took a background of white and yellow flowers to contrast the feeling of constraint by the branches with the feeling of lightness and beauty from the flowers. This is emphasized by not only the overlapping of the two images, but the layering of paint, making the bark on the trees vibrant and strong and the flowers soft and delicate.

Snow admires Lois Dodd, an artist whose scenes of nature and their importance in postwar New York brought a new wave of modern art. Like Dodd, Snow considers her art a marrying of abstract and representational.

In Devil in a Bush/Love in a Mist, Snow experimented with what she learned from Dodd’s show. A colorful, abstract ombre background of green and pink blends with a stunning, blooming white flower spreading its grasp across the frame. It is a delightful dedication to Dodd.

The title of the piece is two separate names for the flower.

“I like the dichotomy of something being both a little mysterious or sinister and beautiful at the same time,” Snow says. “The feeling that the painting evokes is a lot more interesting to me than the actual type of plants, using an external landscape to convey an internal landscape.”

Parenthood is also an inspiration.

“I find it really challenging and difficult and beautiful all at the same time,” says Snow. “There is this combination of it being the center of your world and being kind of stuck in it.”

Motherhood is one of the greatest challenges that reaps the most incredible rewards. There is no better inspiration to create than the gift of “life giving.”

Snow appreciates having her art available to print in mass quantities.

“It makes my art more accessible,” she says. “Instead of limiting it to people who can afford the original, people can own a piece of my art.”

Her background as a stationery designer made the process a natural fit in creating her business.

Snow is also a part of an online art group that shares its work and creates a supportive community that is fresh and inspiring, Snow says.

Snow, 40, lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with her husband, two children, two dogs, and a beloved cat. She has been a member of the Hillsborough Gallery of Art since 2022, a co-op that allows her to show work publicly.

“It feels good to be producing work that induces conversations about my art in the gallery and at craft shows,” she says.

After graduating from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill with a degree in fine art, Snow went into the graphic design business. While she found corporate graphic design draining, she fell in love with typography and color and found her niche in the wedding industry.

For 15 years Snow created wedding cards. She screen-printed her images, layering colors and designs on top of one another to create a final incorporated image.

“I wanted them to be artistic,” says Snow.

When the COVID-19 pandemic stopped the world and canceled weddings everywhere, she began painting with acrylics and has “never turned back.”

“It took a long time for me to know myself well enough to create art that felt meaningful and not just an experiment,” she says. “Art isn’t about being good or bad. It’s about showing up and putting in the work.”