Construction, 1989

Equinox Gallery, Vancouver Private Collection, Toronto

Describing Tom Slaughter’s prolific works, curator Henry Geldzahler said: “The quality of freshness, the familiar world re-seen, from the water towers of New York City to the rural pleasures of boating, is the most immediately arresting aspect of Tom Slaughter’s art.... Bold bright colors swiftly laid down echo with resonances: Léger and Stuart Davis, Raoul Dufy and Roy Lichtenstein.” Bold colours and graphic shapes define American artist Tom Slaughter’s vision of urban and country life. His drawings, paintings, and cut-paper illustrations present objects and scenes from the artist’s life in New York and its environs. He creates objects and scenes that are stripped down to their essential characteristics. In Construction, an aerial view of an urban construction site is reduced to its basic elements: rectangular buildings, cranes and steel beams, and the roof water towers of New York City. The black outlines combined with yellow and red colour-blocking patterns create a playful and modern scene, reminiscent of Henri Matisse cut-outs or Alexander Calder mobiles. Tom Slaughter was born in New York in 1955, where he lived and worked his entire life until his death in 2014 at the young age of 59. In addition to his fine art practice, he worked as a printmaker in collaboration with Durham Press for 25 years. His work is included in the collections of MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and has been the subject of over 30 solo exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Germany, and Japan.