Sterling Heights

Artist of the Month finds freedom in watercolors’ unpredictability

By Cortney Casey
C & G Staff Writer

» Click on image to view full size « Photo by David Schreiber Pete Snodgrass of Sterling Heights, the city’s Artist of the Month for February, shows off one of his favorite floral watercolors, “Pink Beauty.” Snodgrass said he tends to do more floral paintings in the spring and summer, as he prefers to use flowers from his garden as subject models versus photographs. Photo by David Schreiber Pete Snodgrass of Sterling Heights, the city’s Artist of the Month for February, shows off one of his favorite floral watercolors, “Pink Beauty.” Snodgrass said he tends to do more floral paintings in the spring and summer, as he prefers to use flowers from his garden as subject models versus photographs.

More than a decade of painting with watercolors has taught Pete Snodgrass to roll with the punches.

“When you get the water on the paper, sometimes it does things that you’ve just got to live with,” said the 33-year Sterling Heights resident, the city’s Artist of the Month for February. “And it’ll create things. It’s very interesting: We always look at those and say, ‘Well, that was a happy mistake.’ And if you get a mistake, well, you’ve got to learn to live with it. You can’t pile more paint over it.”

The philosophy applies to everyday life as well as with painting. Case in point: A few years ago, while en route to a gallery in Petoskey in mid-December, a snowstorm forced Snodgrass to seek overnight accommodations in Traverse City.

He found himself at Tamarack Lodge, then a new hotel and condominium resort on East Grand Traverse Bay.

“Well, I had my paint, I said, I’ll just paint all day. Got a fireplace, here we go,” he recalled.

Staffers decorating the Christmas tree asked to see what he’d painted and upon seeing his work, summoned the manager, who commissioned him to fashion 100 hand-painted cards to send to the resort’s condo owners — in five days’ time. Now, Snodgrass produces 125 greeting cards annually for Tamarack.

He started his artistic endeavors young, with drawing classes as an 8-year-old at the Edward Art Center in Springfield, Ill. Over the subsequent years, he attended art school and studied oil painting, acrylics, block printing, silver jewelry making and decoy carving.

“Then, of course, I got out of school, and you couldn’t be a starving artist, so I was in sales and marketing for almost 40 years,” he said.

After retiring in 2001, Snodgrass decided to experiment with watercolors for the first time. He took classes at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center and became hooked, proceeding to workshops in New Mexico and Wisconsin.

Now, he’s a teacher himself: He’s run a Monday morning class at the Shelby Community Center since 2006, taught fifth-graders at St. Lawrence School in Utica since 2003, juried art shows locally, and conducted workshops, fittingly, at the Birmingham Bloomfield Art Center.

Snodgrass isn’t afraid to get innovative with watercolors’ unpredictable nature. In one painting on display in City Hall, “January Colors,” he used a knife to scrape the paper, forming tree trunks, and sprinkled salt to imitate sun-dappled water. In “Red Peony,” featuring large, luscious blooms, he applied Elmer’s glue and salt to help define the petals and add visual appeal.

Another, titled “Starry Starry Nite,” was done on “yupo paper,” a plastic film designed so that beginners can practice, and then wash the surface clean and start anew without consuming often-pricey watercolor paper, he explained.

“Artists along the way found out that they could paint on it, and it created all these interesting things by itself, then spray it with a fixative” to preserve the image, he said. “But this is an area, when you’re working with this, you can’t be a control freak, because you just don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Snodgrass capitalized on the “floating” appearance of the paint on the yupo paper by placing objects atop it to form interesting patterns: bubble wrap, a paper coffee cup, salt, droplets of water and rubbing alcohol.

Many times, he warned, using such techniques means relinquishing influence over the outcome.

Snodgrass’ subjects of choice are landscapes and especially flowers, many of which are replicated from blooms grown in his own garden, including roses and dozens of varieties of day lilies.

“I like to do the florals more in the summer, when you can paint from the real thing,” he said. “There’s nothing like painting from the real thing.”

He plucks flowers from his yard or buys them from florists and brings them inside his home, where he prefers to work from his kitchen table due to the northern light.

He estimated that he created at least 50 paintings and about 400 cards — for his family, for Tamarack Lodge and for sale at the Twisted Fish Gallery in Elk Rapids and Anton Art Center in Mount Clemens — last year.

“Some days you’re more inspired than others,” he said. “And you know within five minutes from the time you sit down whether you got it today or not. If you don’t, you might as well get up and do something else.”

A self-described morning person, Snodgrass finds the early hours most productive. He also makes the most of brief stints of spare time while traveling for consulting jobs.

“When I’m in a hotel in the evening, I can just sit there and watch TV, and I can paint 10 cards and not even think about it,” he said. “The other morning, I was in Grand Rapids and I painted seven before I had my breakfast.”

For Snodgrass, a painting can take anywhere from 30 minutes to two days.

“The less you work on it, normally, is the better,” he said. “Everybody wants to know, when is painting done? Well, we can always tell ‘em when it’s overdone. I always look at it, less is better.”

The Sterling Heights Cultural Commission continues to seek applicants for the Artist of the Month program. Applicants can hail from anywhere in the state. For more information, visit www. sterling-heights.net or call (586) 446-2489.

Snodgrass’ pieces will be on display throughout February in the lower level of Sterling Heights City Hall, 40555 Utica Road; and at the Used But Sterling Bookstore, inside the Sterling Heights Public Library, 40255 Dodge Park Road. For more information on his artwork, call (586) 247-9019 or email psndg@aol.com.

You can reach C & G Staff Writer Cortney Casey at ccasey@candgnews.com or at (586)498-1046.