Rand Snell

Artist Statement

Art is discovery, every piece an experiment. When my work resonates with others, I know I've expressed something universal.

I am a writer, composer, pianist, pilot, and visual artist. I am also a person living in recovery, and my visual art emerged after a decade-long struggle with addiction. My visual art, like my music and writing, is dynamic and full of motion and color. Whatever the creative form, there is always a sense of the journey, of narrative, of moving from one place to another, of healing and transformation.

I'm always taking pictures with my iPhone. From my balcony, I can see past Saint Petersburg's Dalli Museum toward a constant mix of land, sea and sky. A texture or color may catch my eye, shadows may fall a certain way, the light may shift into something I've never seen before, there may be a particularly striking sunrise. I photograph what catches my attention.

Or I may be flying an airplane and the earth and sky may juxtapose in a unique way, or rain may hit the cockpit canopy and run back in an interesting pattern. If anything catches my eye, I will take a quick picture of it with my iPhone in hopes it will turn into something pleasing.

Or I may noodle a design with markers on paper, or create a montage or collage with blocks of color in a new pattern, and get lost in the process. I photograph the result.

These photographs of original or found subjects are thematic material I can further explore and develop. The original must be interesting on its own, but it's just the start of a journey that may end far from what I could have imagined when I start.

This way of working is very similar to the process of music composition, as composers often use a small piece of thematic material to create a large work. The most well-known example is Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

Igor Stravinsky allegedly said that "lesser artists borrow, great artists steal." Literally all his thematic material came from other sources: folk music, other classical compositions, songs of the day. But how he used that material, transformed it, juxtaposed it, made him one of the great composers of the 20th Century.

I believe what makes my art unique is this process, which I learned while studying music composition. It's a transformation that frequently involves multiple versions of the same material, overlaid in blocks or strips, and sometimes at different scales.

Frequently there is a strong geometric component to the process, which conveys a sense of depth and movement.

But what matters ultimately is not the process, but the result. Is it interesting? Does it speak to you?

Biography

As a child in rural Florida, growing up on the south side of Tampa Bay, I learned to play the piano, organ and violin, and I composed my own music. I also drew, using geometric patterns I see now in my adult art. In my teens I became a pilot, and rebuilt two old aircraft; flying is still a passion.

But my early career was in politics and public policy.. I worked in the U.S. Senate and the Florida Governor's office, helped shape federal human genome mapping and biotechnology policy in the Senate and at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, ran for Congress and ended my public policy career at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where I was Director of State and Local Relations and senior advisor to the Administrator under President Clinton.

I then left politics and developed a Washington-based career as pianist and composer, before coming back to the Tampa Bay to take care of aging parents. I had just finished a Masters in Music Composition, in 2010, when I was introduced to crystal meth. I was 54 years old. Over the next nine years, music composition became impossible, as I dealt with an accelerating binge or episodic pattern of use that had significant health consequences and forced me to give up flying.

In the absence of music composition, I found creative expression in playing piano and in writing. But during addiction treatment I rediscovered art, and through it came to terms with old trauma. This opened the door to a whole new era of creativity that harkened back to those early childhood drawings.

For many months I drew or created collages almost every day. Even now, no week goes by without some form of visual expression. In the beginning I deliberately did not write about my experiences, because I had depended too much on my left-brain strengths of language and linear narration. Shutting that down temporarily seemed to allow, perhaps even to force, a deeper process of healing integration through daily meditation and art.

I can now write and speak freely about addiction. I am grateful for the treatment and counseling that gave me a very good understanding of why I was so vulnerable to addiction. I am also grateful that Buddhist and 12-Step programs allow me to step into a new life of recovery.

My art displays the inner transformation I have seen in myself and others. I am now healthy and able to fly again, and a lot of my collage work is made of images I take from the air.

My art also reflects my studies in music composition, as I use thematic material, either drawn or photographed, and layer and combine it in different ways to create something entirely unexpected.

I have returned to music composition, primarily through jazz piano improvisations, although I am occasionally inspired to formally compose as well.

Writing has been a constant over my lifetime, and I hope my writing will resonate and be interesting and helpful to others.

Recovery for me is recognizing and letting go of old patterns of behavior and embracing a higher version of myself. There is freedom in letting the mud settle, in seeing more clearly, in becoming a better person each day than I was the day before.

I hope all who suffer the trap of addictive behaviors and substances will find that freedom.

Exhibition History (CV)