Listening to David Slater tell stories is just like looking at his paintings: there’s a lot going on. Along the way, events and ideas that don’t seem related get tied together in ways that make perfect sense. It just takes some time to reach the conclusion.
In his paintings, lots of bright colors are likely to assault. Canvases are stuffed with imagery that might not be clear right away. As in his stories, it’s the details, the surprising drama, and the links made to religious beliefs and symbolism that keep viewers on their toes.
That’s David Slater—a lot of things happen in the course of living. He observes, records, and then connects the dots. Many of the specific meanings of elements of his paintings will never be unraveled. There’s a lot to take in: patience and time to spend with the artwork is required.
Mr. Slater’s artistic journey usually starts in dreams. From there, he meanders through life’s small moments, mixes these with national or world events, and then tosses in spirituality and philosophy—all in brilliant Technicolor rendered with the kind of rawness and simplicity that’s most often identified with outsider art and sometimes folk art.
The main challenge for viewers is to sort out the symbols to unlock the artwork’s meaning. In Mr. Slater’s art, the ordinary and the random are transformed into transcendental experience.
Through Sunday, viewers can take their pick of Slater paintings to ponder at a retrospective of sorts at the Hampton Road Gallery in Southampton. Works range from the 1970s to the present, and include collaged poles and assemblages made from ordinary objects.
In his paintings, the bright mixes with the dark. All have strong autobiographical elements.
For Mr. Slater, tapping into the power of dreams, staying there for a while and transferring the sensations to canvas is best achieved by keeping his painting style unpolished and primitive. Even when adding experiences from the waking world and exploring deep-seated themes and teachings from world religion, the color palette and painting style never waiver.
Mr. Slater has art training and degrees, and has taught art in England and in the United States (including at the Rhode Island School of Design). His influences from art history are varied, but one cornerstone can be found in German Expressionist films from the 1920s and 1930s.
German film studios couldn’t compete with lush and polished productions being made at the time, so they decided to go their own way and use symbolism and “mise en scene” to add mood and enhance meaning.
Symbolism and mysticism are constants in Mr. Slater’s work, he said. His art is designed to tell stories—usually lots of them—with one main plot and lots of side intrigues.
“I’ve always liked film and I think my paintings have a cinematic quality,” Mr. Slater said. “My paintings are narrative and they always tell a story.”
The stories have a dreamlike disconnect and can conjure the experience of dreaming, Mr. Slater said. For more than a decade, he painted only with his left hand and still often paints during the in-between stage of waking and dreaming to capture this quality in his narrative art.
Another strong influence is Franz Kline (1910-1962), whom Mr. Slater met while attending Buffalo State University as an undergraduate. The impact came from a comment that urged artists not to work bigger than their arms could reach. Mr. Slater took that advice to heart. He works in large scale, but never so large that he has to move from the central perspective point, where the painting originates.
Mr. Slater sees his current work moving back to his teenage roots as a figurative painter, and working more sparsely. While this sparseness is difficult to see in paintings made up of people, places and things, Mr. Slater sees an increasing amount of space where only color resides instead of layers of symbolist shapes.
“I feel like my art is coming full circle,” he said. “I’ve been making art since I was 16 years old. As soon as I used a paintbrush for the first time, I knew I was going to be an artist. All this time, I’ve remained true to my calling, my vision, and I continue to make art, no matter what my personal circumstances have been. In a sense, I’ve been working with the same idea for over 30 years.”
“David Slater: A Retrospect” continues through July 6 at the Hampton Road Gallery in Southampton. The gallery is open by appointment only; call 204-9704.
on Jul 1, 2008