Life Painted

Ken Slossberg paints in dualities and dichotomies; banality/lyricism, flatness/vibrancy, motion/stillness. A potent use of space and color, light and shadow, appears in all of his work. His art creates a subtle feeling of passive reflection. This passive reflection derives from the fact that he paints moslty from photographs he has taken himself in his travels and everyday life. He studies the photographs and crops and interprets the images into a composition that best characterizes the scene and emotion he wishes to convey.

This process creates an indelible mood that is twice removed from reality;
life, life captured, life painted.

Many of his compositions are comprised of characters that share a visual interaction, not with the spectator, but with one another. When one gazes at his paintings, the viewer is engaged with the central human figures’ visual attraction to other people or objects. His paintings come alive with texture and movement.

If we look carefully at his work, we find compositions that are rich and vibrant with depth and warmth. His figures may appear passive, or at times austere, but Slossberg’s representations are brilliantly active and engaging. His approach creates a poetic realism in all of his paintings.

Peopled with uniquely ordinary characters, he creates an extra-ordinary world of beauty, light and color.

Slossberg would do well placed among the artists Edward Hopper, David Hockney and Chuck Close. He plays on similar themes and tones, but infuses his own painterly sense of capturing time and space.