Sylvia Snowden is an expressionist painter who works with acrylics, pastels, and mixed media on monumental canvases.

Born in 1942 in Raleigh, she spent her life in the United States. She studied art at Howard University, where she took classes with revered artist and scholar, David Driskell. She also continued her training at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and earned a diploma from La Grande Chaumière in Paris. Throughout her career, she taught at a multitude of universities as a resident artist and guest artist.

Snowden paints voluminous figures that physically embody visceral emotions. You can feel the tension, palpable intensity, fear mixed with joy within the work. She manages to capture the psychological essence of her subjects with striking precision; this is further fuelled by the vibrant colour palette she uses, giving an elevated sense of vitality to the compositions. She insists that her canvases are not simple portraits but rather representations of emotional states.