She actually pins it down. The oil paint gets scraped and slabbed onto wooden surfaces, and the physical handling of it is almost savage. Snyder picks up on walks near her home in Brooklyn, New York. These natural objects play into the work as a form of collaboration, a physical proof of a critical bond with nature. The velvet takes paint in a wonderful way, stiff and dry, a luxuriously deep, moist surface.
Velvet has light in it.
Light that reflects through the paint like the sun through leaves. She would prefer that her work was viewed more in terms of its formal and abstract merit. That's understandable, given that emotions are so often perceived as a sign of weakness, as besides the point. At the same time it is precisely this willingness to share her emotional intensity, honestly, and without indulgence, that gives a rare power and depth to her paintings. Her work is hardly just emotional.