My approach to art making has naturally developed from a purist attitude toward media integrity and is the logical culmination of my extensive academic training in sculpture, printmaking, jewelry, and drawing. In my attempt to avoid the traps of formula and convention, I have constructed my artworks during the past twenty-seven years to differ greatly in content, media, and size. From this body of work, there are ten distinct series.
As an undergraduate student, I sculpted my Pomona figures, a series of life-size terra cotta busts characterizing females I knew. Faculty intervention challenged me to work with cast metals, in which I developed new alloys and unorthodox techniques for my abstracted figures and my geometri-terrestrial bas-reliefs. I eventually combined my subsequent training in printmaking, jewelry, and painting at other universities with my childhood interest in writing, lettering, and drawing. As a result, I was enabled to produce highly-structured mixed-media compositions for the next twenty years.
Following my BFA exhibit entitled "Closing Remarks", I started working with chalk pastels, watercolors, and stone lithography for the "Art as Travel" series. Then came "Through the Ages", initially a group of twenty-nine works depicting the major influences of my life at age 28. Each work was the same size and on the same kind of paper, but each had the style and media appropriate to its particular statement. I returned to chalk pastels for my "Table Series", landscapes of the Arizona desert where I was then living. Soon afterwards, I experimented with the "Silent Colors", pure color and gesture in acrylic-glazed chalk pastels with absolutely no topic or theme.
I returned to metal casting in 1983 with "S.I.N.T.G.", an enigmatic parody of my familial roots. It became a mixed bag of works in bronze, zinc-aluminum, wood, relief prints, drawings, etc. When I finally told my youngest sibling what the acronym "S.I.N.T.G." actually meant, he laughed so hard we almost ran off the highway!
My initial work on "S.I.N.T.G." coincided with the beginning of my most popular series, "Conversations in Grey". I started on these pastel drawings and acrylic paintings immediately after listening to two successful male artists voice their complaints about the art scene and life in general. My original intent for this series was to simply express the human condition by using experiences common to many people - yet, having done so much figurative work already, I decided to avoid any depiction of the human figure or portraiture. By reducing my subjects to symbolic imagery and color, these universal themes are not limited to a singular person, gender, race, color, or creed. The series now numbers eighty-eight, with several more works in progress.
Last but certainly not least is "The Powers That Be", a series of drawings, paintings and sculptural reliefs which serve as an expression of my less singular, more catholic concerns. It is also more figurative. The latest piece is a canvas measuring three feet by seven feet which now hangs in my office.
So, what's next?
Revised 12.12.02 Copyright 2001-2002 B. Sloan. All Rights Reserved