When my wife and I were a young married couple we danced in the Southern California Regional Dance Festival.  It was in the Rose Bowl.  There were 8,000 dancers.  Our group did two dances, the minuet and the viennese waltz.  We wore fancy clothes.  We both had powdered white wigs.  My wife wore a gold satin gown and I had a gold jacket, I had white, long stockings that went to my knees, short pants, and buckles on my shoes.  She enjoyed twirling around and her skirts blossomed open.

When I painted this flower it reminded her of her skirts, thus the name of the painting.  Note the contrast  –  the white petals against the dark green background.  Also you'll see different colors on the petals  –  yellow from the sunlight, blue reflecting the sky, and of course, the red that is naturally there.

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I like to do portraits that fill the canvas with the person's face.  I want the viewer to feel the personality of the subject. 

Notice the eyes  –  the pupil has a highlight and the bottom of the iris does, too.  That makes the person look alive.  The bottom lip always has a highlight, too, because it is smooth and shiny.  There are highlights in the hair.  You can see spots of blue, brown and light green.  The gold necklace has highlights to give it a sparkle.

Don't you think she's interested in you?

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When my daughter and her husband lived in Cologne (Koln) Germany my wife and I enjoyed visiting them there.  They would take us on exciting trips to fun places like Stockholm, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam.  One of our most fun days was spent on the North Sea in Belgium.  We had a picnic on the beach and we enjoyed playing with our three grandchildren there.

This painting shows our daughter, Jennifer, with her baby Natalie.  My wife, Norene, is seen in the distance with Zach and Ashley.  I have tried to give the appearance of water by reflecting the blue sky and the three people who are wading.  I have not painted much detail.  I prefer painting the basic shapes I see which allows the mind to fill in the rest.

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One day my wife announced to me that I was going to do a knife painting.  I said "Oh really?"  She had this still life all set up  and my canvas was placed on the easel.  She handed me my pallette knife.  I was an obedient husband.  I did the painting.

There is absolutely no brushwork on this piece.  I applied all of the paint with the knife.  There is an interesting texture to it.  I could lay some of the paint very smoothly with the back of the knife.  Other places had ridges, like the blossoms.  If you're an oil painter I recommend you try this method once in a while.  It's fun.

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 I was plein air painting with my friend, David Owen, in Brown County, Indiana.

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My father and his brother delighted their families by playing the left hand in one key and the right hand in another one.  It was very dissonant, but hilarious.  We really had to beg to get Daddy to play it, but when he did, we all about died laughing!  This is probably my last memory of him before he ended up in the hospital and died.

I painted it so it would seem like a memory, rather than trying to look photorealistic.  The underpainting of his skin was done in green, then the pinkish color of his skin came through.  His shirt was done in patches of white to add to that feeling.

He is playing "Long, Long Ago".  I really miss him.

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For more information, see the press release for Tom Slack Workshop at Sherrus Gallery.

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I live in the metro Indianapolis, Indiana area.  I love it here, because I'm fifteen minutes from downtown, and five minutes away from the farms.  If I'm stressed out I can jump in the car and drive though the corn fields.  Somehow they are very relaxing to me.

Sometimes I see interesting things while I'm there.  One day I noticed a morning glory vine wrapped around a cornstalk.  Normally I would think of morning glory as a pest, but with the beautiful purple blossoms, deep green leaves, and the intricate way the vine had woven itself around the stalk, I felt I had found a natural work of art.  I hope you like my painting.

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I think many artists try to get too photorealistic.  They put way too much detail in representational art.  You'll see every brick in a building, every leaf on a tree, and sometimes every hair on a person's head.  This really isn't what we see when we're looking at something.  If you're going to paint representationally, squint your eyes . . . only paint what you see.

This painting is my memory of my wife and kids weeding the garden.  I have only painted shapes and values.  You can tell my wife has eyes and a mouth, even though they aren't painted in.  You see the highlights and lowlights in the subjects' hair without painting each strand.  Look at the simple skin tones.  I have painted simple corn plants  and have filled in the background with a basic green color.  You can tell the sun is shining by looking at the values I have used. 

Try my method.  Simplify.

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Shortly after I moved to Indiana ten years ago, my friend Joe taught me how to fish for smallmouths in the rivers.  We'd just wear our swimming suits, a tee shirt, tennis shoes, sunglasses, and a ball cap.  We would wade down the stream and cast our lines to the sides near tree roots.  Soon we'd have a hit and the water would splash as we reeled in a nice smalley.

I've always enjoyed water and have loved painting the rivers here.  This painting is of Sugar Creek in central Indiana.  It shows what it looks like in the early evening.  The trees in the distance have sunlight on them, so I painted warm colors  –   light green, orange, brown.  The closer ones are in the shadows, so they have been done in bluish tones.  The colors of the sky and sunlit trees are reflected in the water.  If there was sound you'd hear the cicadas singing in the trees and my feet splashing in the water.  This is one of the things I love about living here.

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