Tony Slater

Born Derbyshire, UK

Lives & Works Australia

"Plenty of people have painted the Australian bush before, but nobody puts paint to canvas quite like Tony Slater. His touch is distinctive. So is his sense of color and light. Astonishing how true it feels - how utterly lacking in meretriciousness or false feeling. These paintings are gutsy, keenly observed, cliché-free. They look to me like Slater’s best work, which is saying a lot. There is no rhetorical swagger or romantic exaggeration. The choice of subject matter, the unusual perspectives, the close-in cropping – it all feels fantastically fresh.

It’s an unlikely achievement when you consider the history of Australian landscape painting,

teeming as it is with contenders. Note, especially,  the astonishing interplay between shadows, trees, and rocks (here is an  artist who had really got to grips with Australian sun dazzle). Also, Slater’s brilliant ability to capture the textures of rocks and earth, and the look of trees against slopes and skies. At times, it’s like Courbet, Corot, Constable, and Fred Williams all rolled into one. No question about it: Tony Slater is the real thing."

Sebastian Smee, 2011, Art Critic, the Boston Globe

Slater studied at the Royal College of Art in the early sixties and exhibited in solo and group shows in London and Europe. His work is held in private collections in Europe, America, Australia and Hong Kong.  He has been selected to hang as a finalist in the Sulman Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on three occasions.