Tom Sladden

Light air

4-30 April

I started this series during the first lockdown – we were isolating, and everyone was a bit scared and wide eyed.
I had seen a series of figurative paintings by the Irish abstract painter Sean Scully of his son, they struck home. I carried those thoughts and images of his son, Eleuthera, into lockdown. They opened the door for me to dive into the archives and look through some old Super 8 footage from the 1970’s and family snapshots.
Looking at the 12 works now there is a thread I wasn’t aware of while working on these paintings. There seems to be an air of defiance and stoicism inherent in most of the figures. They look to be on the edge, a new frontier land of sorts.
Tom Sladden, April 2023