Artists In Jackson: Zach Snyder
A few years back, Zach Snyder painted a hospital tunnel in Jackson with a freehand explosion of psychedelic color, connecting the Anderson Building, once a psychiatric facility, to the main hospital.
It turned out great, he thought, even though he had no sketch or plan.
After the mural was complete, the hospital reached back out. Patients were reacting to it, seeing shapes in the abstract color that weren’t meant to be there.
“Even people that weren’t in psychosis were like, ‘Is that supposed to be a dog?” Zach says.
Looking back, he understood why his mural caused such a reaction.
“In hindsight, I was like, ‘Why would I do that?’ No wonder.”
He went back and repainted the space himself, this time with flowers – something a little more gentle.
It was, he says, the first time he really did a mural.
His Own Terms
That instinct – to go big first and adjust once real people react – runs through most of what Zach says about his path.
He grew up in Jackson, went to Jackson High, and started drawing seriously as a teenager holed up in his room.
“People started saying that’s really good, and then my ego got a little big, so I kept going,” he says.
He studied illustration at Grand Valley, where a painting class turned into the start of his artistic practice. His professor, Jill Eggers, noticed his resistance to painting still lifes and pushed him toward his own abstract color work instead, letting an assignment grow into a series that had nothing to do with the planned curriculum.
“She really nurtured my, I-don’t-want-anybody-to-tell-me-what-to-do attitude,” he says.
It gave him room to paint what he wanted and grow on his own terms. For his senior show, she suggested he try something large, so he built a 21-foot mural out of three 5-by-7 canvas panels and covered it in cheap mist-tint paint.
Today, that attitude helps him thrive in his perfect mural situations: a few notes or themes from the commissioner, but then total freedom to do his thing.
Learning the Wall
A gallery owner from that senior show connected him to his first mural job at Rockford Construction, where he learned to project and prep a wall.
He moved back to Jackson around 2019 and later painted the parrot mural on the Polly’s Country Market near Spring Arbor, a nod to a live parrot kept in the original store when it opened.
A woman confronted him mid-project over the purple background.
“Who in their right mind would paint that wall purple?” she asked. He second-guessed himself right up until it worked.
“Every project or everything I’ve ever done, I’ve been super nervous,” Zach says. “But it always turns out really great.”
Beating those nerves helped him create murals for Bright Walls, Grow Jackson, and several more in and around Jackson.
Stability First
Today, Zach holds a full-time job at Consumers Energy and teaches art and design as an adjunct at Jackson College, work he credits with taking the pressure off making a living from his art.
“Once I got a full-time job, I thought, ‘okay, I can take a step back and really work on my craft without the pressure,’” he says.
He still paints murals a couple times a year, hosts vendor tables at ArtPop and the Art, Beer & Wine Festival, and moves between abstract shape work, digital drawing, landscapes, and the occasional portrait, mostly to see if he can pull one off.
Zach knows that range doesn’t build a marketable brand, and he’s okay with that.
“I don’t really ever want to limit myself,” he says. “I do everything just out of pure curiosity and enjoyment really.”
Love of Color
Color is what pulls Zach back in, whatever the format.
He traces some of that love of color and abstract forms to years of falling asleep to Pink Floyd, and the visionary work of artists Alex and Allyson Gray.
Mostly, though, Zach’s style comes from noticing things, like colors in nature or shapes in architecture. During spring a few years back, he watched the trees bloom and got fixated on how saturated the pinks and greens actually were.
Exploring color means he’s stopped trying to force any of his work into a single lane, or a single job.
“That’s how I landed where I’m at,” he says. “And I’m chilling. I like it.”
Visit Zach Snyder's website and follow him on Instagram.