The Scars that Shape Us; Former NIC student’s artwork featured in Corner Gallery

Layers of paint and years of time, illuminating energy and emotion, heartbreak and sorrow.

“It’s all about the scars that shape us,” said Daniela Snow, a former NIC art student whose work is now featured in the Corner Gallery in Boswell Hall.

As a non-traditional student, Daniela Snow said that TRIO Student Support Services, NIC's academic assistance program, was there to help her succeed. “They’re just really there for you when you’re a student and you’re struggling and need help to get through the programs,” Snow said. Photo courtesy of Daniela Snow.

Snow, a German native, began her college journey in her mid-30s as a non-traditional student at NIC where she graduated in 2009 with an associate degree in general studies. Today, she holds a master's in visual arts from the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester. “The Scars that Shape Us,” her latest and largest solo show, is also her story.

“This body of work I call my soul paintings,” Snow, now a resident of New Hampshire, said. “It was created with the idea to process all the different emotions it awoke in me after my father’s passing.”

The project took her almost three years and encapsulates the emotions she faced.

“Each painting speaks a little bit about different emotional issues,” Snow said. “I had a hard time getting back to painting the way I did so I approached it totally differently and did something else, and you may know how it is when something affects your life. Other things, other memories come up.”

Snow used acrylic and metallic paint, bits of gold foil, acrylic pens, wood and canvas board for her pieces.

“The process is all about layering and layering and putting the time in,” Snow said.

To start, she puts down an outline quickly.

“It’s almost like a gestural drawing that comes straight from the emotion you feel, and then the process of living with it and making it work,” Snow said. “That is where it takes about six months to a year to finish one.”

Snow works with layering the paint onto the surface until she is satisfied with the end result.

“Danny’s work I think is highly processed and theoretically based, so a lot of stuff you see when you’re looking at her work has to do with time invested in a surface,” said Michael Horswill, an art instructor at NIC who also had Snow for a student. “A lot of these paintings that she’s done have been done by doing multiple layers of paint.”

Snow started her project in 2018 and finished the last painting earlier this year. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that so that was really cool,” said Victoria Lupold, 18, an NIC art student who said she hopes to become a high school art teacher. “I felt that the work was really beautiful and highly emotional. I’m a really emotional person personally, so hearing her experience and knowing that what she was going through fueled her art kind of inspired me.”

Snow said she always dreamed of being an artist and when she started classes at NIC she really began taking art seriously.

“She’s really just a go-getter, I mean she would just do everything,” Horswill said. “I would ask for a couple of drawing ideas, assignments, and she would do more than that. And she just really pushed herself really hard.”

Snow said the best thing for art students to do if they are stuck is just keep working on their project.

“A lot of times by working it, it solves itself,” Snow said. “Ask a lot of questions of yourself. Don’t be shy asking other people for help. Get input, go outside. But mostly work it when you feel stuck because that’s the only way to do it.”

While many events have shaped her life, Snow said she will always be an artist.

“I wouldn’t even know any different,” Snow said. “I think art chose me.”

Snow’s art will be on display in the Corner Gallery throughout the fall semester.

More of Snow's work is viewable on her webpage, http://www.dassnow.com/.