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about his art, but he admits to discomfort to a point of near paralysis in larger groups, particularly those gathered to celebrate his success.
“I came to Rappahannock to get away to a place where I could afford to live — and find my voice. You don’t think about making art. You just do.” And in Rappahannock, he could just do.
At first, the voice troubled Slack, as it does with many artists.
“When I was studying art — all these different styles — I came to wonder, Where am I?’ I have a specific history and grew up among people who never had a voice.”
Probably without knowing it, he had already found his own.
He bases his art, he says, “on things I see every day.” And while that is accurate as far as it goes, he also says, “Most of my work deals with memories I have. I work from feelings I have.”
His work, for the most part, is very representational and his content is clearly important to him. He has a fascination with architectural artifacts, though his Royal Academy painting verges from that subject, but not the theme, which is solitude, if not loneliness, times past, and opportunities lost. Slack’s ‘constructions’
He works in two and three dimensions, creating fascinating and whimsical “constructions” that fit no prescribed category, like sculpture or even for that matter, “construction.”
One, . titled “Love Me Tfender,” a scale-model silver 1940s house trailer parked up on cinder blocks, with a raggedy TV antenna and a plastic lawn chair by the open door and shards of glass and cigarette butts on the sand, represents an icon of American culture, beautifully rendered. Inside the trailer on the wall hangs a portrait of Elvis.
Scale for Slack is an expressive tool.
He has created similar “constructions” of gin joints from the West Virginia hollows, roadside attractions (“See the Snake Pit”), and honky-tonk beer par
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