Gavin Snider

Two paintings from the edge of the forest, looking in and looking up. July in the Catskills.

A watercolor painting of a Catskill Mountains landscape.

At the edge of the woods, the gravel road is a blue dash. Sunlight catches on the tree trunks, sends purple shadows twisting on thick bark.

Paint the forest floor with palette gray, the muddy mix of leftover watercolor molded into dirt and rock and fallen leaves.

Summer at Aurora Brooklyn, and green vines climb the fence and cover the red brick walls of the outdoor patio.

On the corner of Grand & Wythe, bike tires roll over pavement, basketballs pound concrete, and people walk toward the Williamsburg waterfront and the ever growing rows of apartment towers.

Don’t you know? It can be beautiful, sometimes.

A series of Park Slope brownstones on Seventh Avenue, 9th Street, 2nd Street, and Carroll Street. Some of my favorite watercolor paintings are available now on my website. Link in bio.

One Great City! The Weakerthans · Reconstruction Site · Song · 2003

Happy Canada Day

A watercolor painting of an apartment building on 15th street in New York City.

July 1st in New York City and everyone's AC is being pushed to the absolute limit.

Window units cast shadows on brick walls in even intervals.

You can see them on 15th Street, a hundred sundials on a summer day.

They pose for pictures and look up at the celestial ceiling.

“There’s the crab. There are the twins.”

“These are shapes they made from all the stars in the sky.”

“They blacked out those windows for air raids during World War II.”

“This must be one of the biggest train stations in the world.”

Friday morning at Grand Central Terminal. I’m drawing by the ticket booth. Everyone’s trying to get somewhere.

“Two one-way tickets to Poughkeepsie.”

“One ticket to Cold Spring on the Hudson Line.”

“Can you help me? I need to get to New Rochelle, but I’m not coming back ‘til Thursday.”

every time i go see live music i think “i love live music”

I walked back through the park, descended down into the subway, boarded the train, sat down and started to write about my experience. A guy with a violin boarded at the next stop. He immediately broke into Greensleeves. Alright, maybe I’ll never be released.

Eventually the music man moved on, and we were saved by a power trio on the shore of The Lake playing a perfect, jammy rendition of I Shall Be Released, close harmonies, tight rhythm, melodic guitar solos. “Any way now…any day now. I shall be released.”

A playlist repeated on someone’s speaker for an hour or so, lite piano versions of the world’s most saccharine songs, Hallelujah, Can You Feel the Love Tonight, and Greensleeves, fine by me, but woefully out of season.

Bow Bridge was an endless stream of people. Couples posed for engagement photos, or stopped to look out on the lake. Cheers erupted for a successful proposal.
Another couple engaged on the spot.

A girl climbed the railing to peer into the stone flowerpot. “Any eggs up here?”

Well, it was a hard subject, the light changing, rowboats drifting, trees a mix of buds, bare branches, and the first leaves of the season. I worked it and overworked it and gave a shout of excitement when the sun came around and cast shadows on the curving steel span.

I walked through Central Park on a warm Saturday morning, past the bubble man and the string quartet and the guy selling hats on the blanket and the girl in her quinceañera dress, hopped a fence, and sat down on a root to paint the Bow Bridge.

Well they closed the old Blockbuster, then they closed the liquor store inside the old Blockbuster. That's the story of my hometown.

YouTube video by paganmaestro Eric Taylor : Peppercorn Tree

Logging on to say this is the saddest (and best) song that's ever been written and more people should know it.

photograph of the cover of coldplay’s 2002 album ‘a rush of blood to the head’, with ‘death cab for cutie — plans’ scrawled on in black sharpie

rejected artwork. never forget

Let's go Mets!

A few people stopped to talk as I painted.

"There it is. Get your angle."

"We'll check back in an hour. Better reward yourself with a beer after."

"This is an awesome bar. It’s got an awesome back patio and it’s great and everything’s awesome."

A woman scolded her barking dachshund. "Come on Frank be nice. You’re acting like a puppy."

I could feel the sea air, cool at my back. A steady stream of cars and Citibikes bumped down the cobblestones of Conover Street. I listened to the conversations of people passing by.

"By the water the air just smells better."

"It’s just one of those places. People like it, you know."

I walked down to Red Hook on the first warm day of spring. It seemed like the whole city had the same idea I did. Friends lingered around the green truck in front of Sunny’s Bar. I knew that if I waited long enough there would be music inside, musicians gathering for a backroom bluegrass jam.

Say Goodbye to Brooklyn, by Sad American Night 7 track album

I have a band called Sad American Night. Our new record Say Goodbye to Brooklyn came out Friday. A lot of hard work went into making these seven songs. We came out bruised and beat up but ultimately better for it. It's been a long time coming, and we're really excited to share it with the world.

They could stay alive for thousands of years, growing slowly, sprouting new trunks, renewed by forest fires. They were here long before us. May they be here long after we’re gone.

I don’t know if I’ve ever painted aspens before. I’ll tell you it’s harder than it looks, thin, straight trunks almost iridescent in the sun, bark dotted with dark black marks.

I thought about the trees, each grove a single colony, clones connected by an underground root system.

I stood outside the cabin. Inside St. Patrick’s Day dinner was cooking, mashed potatoes and beef stew. Footsteps of kids running on the deck above, looking for “The Monster.”

Footprints led into the trees, maybe a snow fort carved into an embankment, or maybe just a melting drift.

“Not much snow on the mountain for this time of year,” a local told me on the lift. “You can already see the ground in places and it’s not even April.”

But there was still enough snow cover to paint the long shadows of aspens, and tomorrow they’re calling for 8 to 10 more inches.

It feels like the set of a movie, and next door it really is. Inside those warehouses are soundstages, and right now they might be filming the next show you’ll see on TV, or the next scene you’ll see on the silver screen.