FRESCO ARTIST | Charles Snell
Photo by @samuelcallenfilms
About
Charles Snell (b.1980) is an innovative contemporary fresco artist, working in pigmented plaster. He grew up on a farm in the Gloucester countryside, spent time in St. Ives, Cornwall, and studied at Chelsea College of Arts, University of Arts, London. Charles lives with his wife, Lianne, and their five children, in the foothills of a mountain near Abergavenny, working from his nearby studio.
Charles has exhibited as Aster Muro in solo and group shows at The Art Shop & Chapel, Canwood Gallery, Clerkenwell Design Week, Decorex and 100% Design. He paints collections of smaller fresco panel paintings as well as monumental wall and ceilings fresco murals. His work is found in residential, hospitality and commercial settings across the UK and Europe.
Aster Muro’s work has been featured in Wallpaper, Design Week, Country Life and Times Property. In 2020, Charles painted the largest contemporary fresco in the UK in MediaCityUK, Manchester. Recent commissions include a two-part curved fresco mural for global built environment consultancy, Arup, in the EQ building in Bristol; a coffered ceiling fresco in the private dining room for San Carlo’s Cicchetti restaurant in Piccadilly, London; and a fresco mural and teaching workshops for co-living innovators POHA House, in Aachen, Germany.
Charles’ art is inspired by searching for connectedness, truth and spirituality in the modern age, by a sense of awe, and by exploration of the unfathomable. His frescoes have a bold, immersive power; a texture at once reminiscent of watercolour and tapestry, and an intensity and luminosity bordering on the transcendent or sublime. His work is influenced by practices in Action Art and Abstract Expressionism, and by artists such as Turner, Degas, Rothko, Joan Mitchell, Patrick Heron and Gerhard Richter. Charles draws endless inspiration from sense of place, the elements, and the landscapes around him. His works are layered place narratives and internal landscapes.
Photo by @samuelcallenfilms
Process
Charles uses lime and marble plasters, specialist hand tools, and new spray technology, to create frescoes and panels. His work is produced in a precious window of time. Once air and water meet plaster, Charles has a limited number of hours to finish a piece before his material sets (a time akin to the traditional fresco painter's giornata).
Charles is always in dialogue with his alive and ever-changing material. Each fresco is a performative installation for which he rehearses in dedicated studio practice but which always takes on a life of its own.
Creating frescoes is a tremendous physical expression. The medium requires complete commitment, quick and considered movements, and great exertion, bearing similarity to action painting.
To plaster, Charles adds pigment in sensitively mixed colours. These colours trace the energetic movements of the plaster over the canvas, and capture the spirit of the moment, illustrated in intriguing flourishes of animation.
Each abstract mark the plaster makes conveys a journey where, for a brief moment, inert material becomes active, fluid and expressive (in a sense immaterial) before setting again. This concealed narrative whispers a sense of something eternal that is uplifting, joyful and powerful.
