Nicola Slattery RBA

Statement

Art for me is all about imagination. I live in rural south Norfolk surrounded by fields full of wildlife and sheep and the occasional deer. I have two daughters who both play violin. My mind often wanders and images of sheep, girls with flowers and encounters with deer visit my thoughts. I paint these ideas which merge with half remembered stories, and imagined scenarios. There is a deliberate intention to create characters engaged in “peaceful thoughtfulness”. I believe there should be more thought and more peace in the world.

Bio

Born in Coventry in 1963 Nicola Slattery went on to study at Coventry Art School graduating in 1986 with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art. Moving to Oxford she became an active member of the Oxford Printmakers Coop and the Oxford Art Society. In 1995 she moved to Norfolk where she works from her home in a converted barn surrounded by the fields and other rural pastoral elements which so often feature in her work.

As an art tutor she has taught over a thousand individuals on a range of summer schools and weekend courses. Some have been complete beginners others experienced artists looking for new techniques and direction. She helped pioneer the collagraph and perspex drypoint techniques which have now become popular with other artists. Through writing articles for various art magazines and teaching on her courses many have been influenced by her work. Although most of her time is now devoted to painting she continues to run half a dozen or so weekend courses and the occasional art holiday.

Exhibiting widely across the UK and Europe her work as come to be well loved and well known. She has taken part in a diverse range of art fairs, group exhibitions and solo shows and had works selected for exhibition with the New English Art Club (NEAC), Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) and the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.

Her work has been published in numerous magazines including cover features in “Artists & Illustrators” and “Galleries”. Several poetry books have her work on their covers and her paintings and prints have been reproduced in many art books. Sister Wendy Beckett, television art commentator said of her work:  “This is magical art, pure humorous and strong” (March 2007). Philip Vann, author of numerous books and essays on modern British and Irish art reviewed her “Human Nature” exhibition at the Fosse Gallery: “This wonderfully diverse exhibition contains....archetypal figures of compelling enigmatic inwardness” (April 2015). Nicholas Usherwood writing in Galleries Magazine (April 2015) said of the exhibition: “... can hardly be bettered as expressions of a fertile imaginative fantasy.”