David W Slack

Well the first pot is ready to face the kiln again, and so deserves a short film and a little sing-song. Not the one I intended to start with, but the one that elbowed its way to the head of the queue. This one, titled ‘The Flowers’, is the first of a Mystery Noire series which seems to have sprung directly from my passion for movie title sequences mixed with more than a whiff of graphic novel aesthetic. I’ve been working on a visual and technical formula to balance a comic book vibe with a painterly approach to the backgrounds. I’m used to working in oil paints where what you see is what you get – this medium is less intense than it will be once fired on and fused to the ceramic surface, and I shall have to wait to see what emerges from the furnace. Between painted layers sit silkscreen prints sometimes applied directly to the pot, sometimes onto Japanese tissue and carefully transferred, followed by much rubbing, scraping and sanding, spattering, hacking and then re-painting here and there. At times this feels very two steps forward and fourteen back, but really this is the only way to get the battered, exhumed look I’m going for with this series. #handthrown #thriller #noire #graphicnovel #comicbook #illustration #ceramic #pottery #studiopottery #oneoff

A new painting.

It’s true, everyone DOES know his name, but do we REALLY know him? Can we ever truly understand how an entire life lived under an unrelenting series of such unutterably stressful and mind-bendingly fantastic situations shapes a person? YES! Cry the behavioural psychologists. Oh well, alright then, but even so, here is my study of perhaps a more corporeal little bear, still stoic as all get out, posing in one of his old haunts despite it all. I’d ideally like to see this one end up on the chimney breast of a sparsely furnished 1930s cottage, a Squire’s grand dining room, a cloud castle, or hanging askew on a wall behind piles of dusty ephemera in a truly ‘pop-up’ magic toyshop. Witches need not apply.

A new painting. ‘The Nature Table: Oil on board. I felt like painting an empty interior, and the ceramic bear was to be part of the ornamentation. During the process it somehow took on a life of its own and became the subject. A photobomb in oils. Yes, yes, yes, I DID provide the lighting, so it’s partly my fault.

This is the nearest I’ve come to actually painting an empty space – generally some creature or other comes padding along and pokes their shnoz downstage centre.

In the end, I like the balance though – the lifelong dance between awareness of space and the objects within it. Physical, metaphysical. One foot in each world.

Now Sold. Still Life with Stormtrooper – a Devotional Object. Oil on board. 12x15cm. I don’t know what it is with me and the original Stormtrooper design, but the hair stands up on the back of my neck at the slightest glimpse of those shiny white surfaces. It’s to do with the cold stare of the helmet I think. The mouth resembling the chilling Roger Kastel poster for Jaws – the sculpt was such a brilliantly timeless piece of work. Liz Moore who sculpted the original Stormtrooper head as well very many of the instantly iconic costumes including C3PO for the first film, died in a car crash just before filming began, so never got to see the (ahem) far, far reach of her work.

Overblown? Moi?