Wendi Schneider is an American artist based in Denver, Colorado, widely recognized for her ongoing series of hand-gilded photographs, States of Grace. Drawn to the serenity and transcendence she finds in the sinuous elegance of organic forms, Schneider creates illuminated impressions of vanishing beauty in the natural world. Through the layering of color, texture, and precious metals, her process produces ephemeral illusions that appear to dance on the paper’s surface, as light reflects off gold leaf to create a synthesis of material, technique, and subject.
Born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1955, Schneider grew up in a family spanning several generations of artists. She studied painting and art history at Stephens College and Newcomb College at Tulane University. Her interest in photography emerged in the early 1980s when she began using a camera to create references for her oil paintings. Mesmerized by the alchemy of the darkroom and the expressive potential of the photographic image—yet missing the sensuous intimacy of oils—she began layering paint onto her photographs, manipulating the boundary between the real and the imagined. This early hybrid process laid the conceptual and technical groundwork for the layered and gilded works that later became States of Grace.
After recreating the 1901 Picayune’s Creole Cook Book for The Times-Picayune newspaper, Schneider moved from New Orleans to New York City in 1988, where she launched a diverse career that included fine art commissions and photography for magazines, book covers, and advertising. Following her relocation to Denver in 1994, she expanded her practice to include design and art direction, continuing to work with photography for clients while maintaining an intermittent studio practice. In 2012, she returned fully to sustained studio work, initiating a body of photographs centered on flora and fauna—the inception of States of Grace, which has since become her signature series.
Schneider’s photographs are held in the permanent collections of The Asheville Art Museum, The Center for Creative Photography, The New Orleans Museum of Art, The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Auburn University Library Special Collections, as well as numerous private collections. Her work has been widely published and exhibited worldwide. Schneider is represented by A Gallery for Fine Photography (New Orleans), Arnika Dawkins Gallery (Atlanta), Catherine Couturier Gallery (Houston), Etherton Gallery (Tucson), PhotoGraphic Gallery (San Miguel de Allende), Rick Wester Fine Art (New York), Vision Gallery (Jerusalem), and Wach Gallery (Cleveland).
Schneider is a collector of turn-of-the-20th-century art and objects, with a focus on Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts and photographs. She has juried numerous exhibitions and is a member of the Advisory Council at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center.
