All posts by Phil Slattery

Publisher, Rural Fiction Magazine; publisher, The Chamber Magazine; founder, the Farmington Writers Circle. I have written short stories and poetry for many years. In my careers as a Naval officer and in the federal government, I have written thousands of documents of many types. I am currently working on a second edition for my poetry collection and a few novels.
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Distance

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Distance by Phil Slattery
Distance
by Phil Slattery

 

This came from a photo of a mannequin in San Diego I took about 1995 with a 35mm camera.  At the time I wanted to catch a mood of distance between people, not necessarily lovers, but between people who had some connection be it relatives, lovers, friends whatever. Some years later after I bought Photoshop Elements 2.0, it was one of the first photos I toyed with when exploring Photoshop.  I wanted still to capture that feeling of distance and toyed with several features until I produced this. The various subtleties of gray and white and the odd browns and greens add to the feeling along with the mottled look (like a very grainy photo) and, of course, the vacant, hollow eyes and the neutral feeling from the lips combine to make this a quite poignant work.

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Wave and Sun

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Wave and Sun
Wave and Sun

This has always been one of my favorites, though I am not certain why.  I painted this several years back (2009? 2010?) when I lived on the Gulf Coast at Corpus Christi, TX.  I do not recall how I came up with the idea.  Somehow it comes to mind that I was at Bob Hall Pier on North Padre Island when it occurred to me to have a wave with its crest pointing to the sun.  The sea and sky of course would be blue and the sun as a large yellow dot would draw the viewer’s attention to it along with the crest of the wave.   The sun would have to be off-center of course.  I made the texture of the wave by stringing light blue paint up and down in curves to shape the wave.  Now that I am thinking of it, it seems that a lot of the challenge in composition to me has been to draw the viewer’s eye around the canvas.  In my abstracts I try to do this by putting small spots of dabs of color against contrasting backgrounds.  For example, if I had a mostly dark blue abstract, I might put a dab of bright yellow paint in one corner and a bit of bright orange in another, and so forth, if I thought the viewer’s eye needed to go to that spot to keep the eye moving.   Anyway, that should be the subject for another post dealing with abstracts instead of something more realistic like this wave and sun.

Thoughts?  Comments?

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Foxfire

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Foxfire
Foxfire

This is a small digital work I created one evening while toying with Photoshop.  I used dark blue and black background to emphasize distance.  Then I risked straining the eyes of the viewer by using red balls, whose edges I darkened gradually to increase the three-dimensional effect.  It’s a simple work, but one I find intriguing even though I created it.

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Tears

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Tears
Tears

I can’t recall when I painted “Tears”.   I chose a large canvas about 30″ x 36″ or something similar.  I probably laid down a coat of black Gesso first (I like a black undercoat), though I may have left the canvas white.  I wanted to bring out the color like Van Gogh did, so I used medium to high tones of contrasting colors.  I used a blue background to bring out depth, because blue is usually associated with distance.  I believe I kept that texture smooth (I don’t know where the painting is now, maybe still in Corpus Christi), so that no details would be outstanding and would bring out the depth more0.  I used a yellow to contrast with the blue and because yellow is normally associated with being closer.  I textured the figure with a palette knife to contrast with the smoothness of the blue and to bring the figure closer by adding detail.   Overall, I wanted to keep details to a minimum in order to accent the man idea of a man crying copiously.   I made the tears by stringing light blue house paint from a distance of a few inches (the closer one strings paint, the more control one has over it).  I wished later that I had made the tears the same color as the background, because the ones over his chest disappear into the yellow, being of a similar tone.  I am not good at drawing or sketching yet, so that’s another reason I tried to keep the details to a minimum.   All in all though, I wanted to make an emotional connection to the viewer by simply showing a man shedding copious tears.

Thoughts?  Comments?

Posts prior to RFM

Ragged Sun, Ragged Sky

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Ragged Sun, Ragged Sky
Ragged Sun, Ragged Sky

I sometimes like to experiment with very basic forms or very basic ideas.  In this case I chose the sun.  The painting is 24 inches by 36 inches.  I used a large salad bowl to make the circle for the sun. I wanted to contrast the yellow of the sun with the blue of the sky.  I applied different tones of blue from the paint tubes along with a few dabs of other colors placed strategically around the canvas to draw the viewer’s eye to different areas. Then I smeared them around with putty knives and palette knives. I laid the yellow of the sun on thick and shaped it with palette knives to give the sun a rough texture and to make it seem like it is whirling.