For David Slater, Artworks Are an Obsession

Born of dreams, visions and exploration of ideas, each of David Slater’s colorful mixed media paintings is a temporary obsession. Some pieces can take the Sag Harbor artist the better part of a year to complete, and it’s rare that he works on two canvases at once.

The 71-year-old painter said his work typically begins with an image pulled from his subconscious. From that point, Slater will follow his inspiration wherever it chooses to take him. The farther down the rabbit hole, the better, it seems.

His most recent piece is a large depiction of the Garden of Eden, as only Slater would envision it. “I’ve been working on this one painting all summer,” he said, adding that a piece could take him as many as 10 months to complete.

“The Garden of Eden I’m painting is my backyard," Slater said. The painting depicts an African Adam and Eve standing nude in front of a lattice fence with Slater’s neighbor’s porch and several feeder birds and insects populating the colorful composition. The painter’s interpretation of Lilith, Adam’s first wife, is presented like a saint, smelling a rose on the right side.

Every object, symbol, word and creature has meaning gleaned from hours of research in Slater’s stream-of-conscious, connect-the-dots journey into the world of his content.

“I’m reading six books at once,” Slater said, explaining that his most recent painting has led him to explore Jewish mysticism, the Knights Templar, the saints and the many origins of the creation myth. “The story is very much a story with coded meanings,” he said, explaining that the biblical version of Adam and Eve could be about suppressing ancient Pagan religions and the power of women.

Slater pointed out that the apple may have been the hallucinogenic Amanita Muscaria mushroom, and he paints the fruit to resemble the head of a penis in order to touch on the sexual aspects of the story.

“The painting becomes a filter and a focus, then all kinds of ideas pop up from this,” Slater said, noting that he follows a trail until there is nothing left to paint. “It leads me to different places,” he said, pointing out that he sees each topic through so deeply that he rarely has the need to paint another piece like it. “I’m not going to do a series of biblical paintings,” Slater said.

A Sag Harbor resident for the last 30 years, Slater is something of a fixture in the community, but he had many adventures before settling on the East End.

The artist was born and raised in Massapequa before studying art education at the State University of New York in Buffalo. Slater went on to teach art in New York and England, and then earned a master's degree at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, where he then taught for three years before getting fired for protesting the war effort in Vietnam.

Slater had a son named Jeremy, now 45, then continued his political path and joined the siege at Wounded Knee. He lived the hobo lifestyle traveling around the country and then lived in California for a time before ending up in Sag Harbor.

No matter what Slater was doing in his life, he never stopped painting and making art, and his vision has not wavered.

“Since the mid-'60s, my painting style has been fairly consistently the same,” he said, noting that his work is influenced by comic books, toy soldiers and the desire to tell stories through narrative.

Slater said his next painting could be about psychic experiences, though he’s also considered paintings about Wounded Knee or travel. His newest work will be exhibited by Slater’s exclusive representative Peter Marcelle’s new space, which is to open soon in Bridgehampton. For more, visit www.DavidSlaterArt.com.