Fame and success for an artist can come in different ways. For a lucky few it arrives overnight along with the prestige of a major award. Some borrow the fame of a relative such as a parent or spouse and others court controversy as a way of becoming known. Nicola Slattery is in the category of those who have achieved their recognition by sheer hard slog. For the past twenty years she has mounted at least two solo exhibitions nearly every year along with participation in many group shows and art fairs throughout the UK and abroad. Slattery returns once again to the John Russell Gallery in Ipswich from May 8 to June 3, 2006 where for the fourth time in a decade she exhibits her paintings and limited edition prints. In September the RONA Gallery in London hosts what will be her third solo exhibition of paintings in three years with this leading specialist Mayfair gallery.
Collectors and critics have gradually become familiar with her distinct figurative style, a style which has inspired and influenced more than a handful of other aspiring artists. Her work has featured regularly in most of the UK‚s art magazines with cover features last year with both Galleries (March) and Artist & Illustrators (September). Nearly all her paintings sell within a year of completion to a mix of corporate and private buyers and prices achieved for her work have more than doubled over the past five years.
The imagery is straight from Slattery's unique imagination in which the laws of nature are not so rigorously applied as in the real world. Her media usually consists of painting with acrylic and the images so created have the feeling of a dream or a half remembered story. Many people describe seeing much more in one of Slattery's paintings than is actually painted. It is this particular quality arising from her deliberate use of ambiguity that makes Slattery's work stand out and which probably accounts for many people describing how they are drawn to look at particular paintings again and again.
Slattery is reluctant to offer her own interpretation of her work explaining that:
"I don't think visual artists should need to describe their images with words. Visual art speaks to people in different ways and I think my images are perceived differently by different people. There is no right or wrong interpretation. The images I create are windows into my own imagination and I hope they enable others to look into their own imaginations and that they see something they like".
IMAGE
Nicole Slattery
Call of the Wild
H.Coloured Drypoint
Image Size - 7.75" x 9.50"
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