Tyson Snow: Mormon Artist
Tyson Snow is an artist who draws, paints, and sculpts.
He tried sculpting for the first time when he was sixteen years old. According to the Deseret News, “he mixed up a bucket of plaster in an old tin popcorn container and let it set until he had a solid cylinder of plaster. He then removed the tin, spread a blanket on the ground and, using a cheap set of wooden chisels, began to carve into the plaster.
- My intention was to make a head. I didn’t have any reference. I hadn’t had any previous training, but I lay there for hours and hours and found that I never tired of the process. I never got bored with it.[1]
His piece, The Reaper, took first place in the sculpture category in the International ARC Salon Competition, which focuses on classical art. In November 2015, he traveled to Barcelona, Spain, to accept his prize.
Snow is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Reaper is the product of years of thoughts and feelings about death. He said, “If death is properly understood, or understood as Latter-day Saints or as others in the religious world [understand it] or as the Savior taught it, it’s not something to be feared.”[2] He depicted The Reaper as a woman and gave her a “calm, powerful, and peaceful” stance.
He has also created a number of complex portraits of tribal people he saw in Northern Namibia and South Africa. The portraits are rendered with white pencil on black substrate. He also paints in oils.
Snow and his wife, Joleen, are the parents of four children.
