“I want my art to go with your brain,
not with your couch.”
John Slaby
John Slaby
In the opening talk for his 2005 exhibition Crimes Against Art the painter John Slaby stated “In my art I have tried to combine the
beauty of the decorative movement with the mental stimulation of the modernist
movement without the pitfalls of each. I want my art to have beauty and to
stimulate the mind. I want to avoid the trite forms of decorative art and the
adolescent anger of modernist art. I want my art to be active in that it provokes
thought rather than passive… I want my art to be infused with meaning and
intention - to provoke thoughts and feelings by sharing my thoughts and
feelings on a variety of topics from our shared human experience. This creates
a connection between the viewer and myself. A connection based on our shared
human experience. And it is this connection that provides the spirituality in
art. I crave this
spirituality and it is the reason I paint. I often wonder if I would paint if
no one were to see the art. Perhaps not. I wonder if this is a good thing
because so much of my happiness depends on the response of my audience. One of
the hardest challenges for me is to remove myself from these expectations.”
With a PhD in engineering Slaby paints in his spare time
and produces a variety of conceptually inspired realist narrative works in the landscape,
figurative and still life genres.
About which he says “In a way I am very lucky because I have
a good day job which I kind of like and only have to do part time. I think the
composer Charles Ives is my prototype. He was successful in the insurance
business and composed music in his free time. Knowing he didn’t have to make
money from his music liberated him to compose as he wished – and he did some
mighty strange things, some very groundbreaking things.”
A lapsed
Catholic, Slaby has replaced his religion with his painting.
As he said
at the opening of his 2008 exhibition Somethings
to Think About “If anyone asks me if I go to church, I reply with the
wonderful double entendre “I never miss church on Sunday”. I usually spend my
Sunday’s painting. Painting is my spiritual experience. This comes from
two aspects. The first is the creation of something from nothing. The blank
canvas taking on form. Beauty ex nihilo. That’s
what I get on my Sunday’s. The second is the showing, the connection with
others. That’s what I am getting tonight and I hope that you can share in that.
This is my spirituality. This place is my church.”
With subject
matter that ranges across sex, violence, religion and death combined
with the realization of his own mortality, Slaby’s latest works have shifted
from the intellectual towards the emotional and to ensure that their
points are not missed each comes with a wall plaque.
As he has
said “Tonight I have all these paintings here and everyone has a description on
it.”
Slaby’s
current exhibition Death and Desire is on show at Houston’s Archway Gallery until the 7th
of January.
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