18: RONALD SLOWINSKI (1932-2023) HOPI FLOWER WATERCOLOR

Ronald J. Slowinski (Missouri, 1932-2023)
Untitled: From The Hopi Flower Series (August, 1975)
The watercolor on paper is signed and dated in pencil by the artist lower right, and inscribed WC-75-17 verso.


Throughout his career, Ronald Slowinski produced several distinct series of works, each series shared a similar narrative through various progressions. This composition from the Hopi Flower series colorfully abstracts and plays on Native American motifs against an adobe-like ground divided by a spirited play of architecture on fully visible float mounted paper that becomes part of the work.

Ron Slowinski was born into a large Polish family on Chicago's West side in 1932. Growing up, he was both musically and artistically inclined. He became proficient enough at music to sit in as organist during high mass at his family church, but art became his overriding passion. The innovative and diverse architecture of his hometown, especially the designs of Frank Lloyd Wright; and the world class masterpieces at the Art Institute of Chicago, one of America's oldest and largest museums, fueled his artistic passions. As a teen, he chose commercial art studies at Lane Technical High School where he studied drawing, lithography and etching. After serving in the Korean War and earning a certificate in painting from the Art Institute of Chicago, he had his first one person show in 1957 at the famed Wells St. Gallery. This newly established avantgarde exhibition space was founded by, and showcased the works of, some of the city's youngest and most advanced abstractionists of the time, like Ron, and Robert Natkin and John Chamberlain. He considered those post-war years in Chicago, where he worked solely at making art, to be his equivalent of grad school. Ron would, according to ArtNet.com, go on to participate in more than 60 exhibitions in his lifetime, 25 or more being one person shows focused solely on his work.

Ron Slowinski was the consummate life-long learner, and a consummate artist. His myriad passions and the things he thought deeply about found their way to his canvases in intriguing, cryptic and often mysterious ways. It wasn't until very late in his career that he experimented with figurative painting, despite being a skilled draftsman. Instead, he composited his visions, ideas and influences into sumptuous and enigmatic non-representational paintings. His influences were wide-ranging and seemingly cumulative over decades. In the 1960s, the award of a Fulbright Research Grant affording him a year of study and painting in Japan furthered an already simmering influence previously fueled by books in his library, and an exhibition of Japanese masterworks he'd seen that opened his eyes to the power of extraordinary colors and abstract space in painting compositions. Beginning in the late 1970s, and for the next 20 years, he became fascinated with and intently studied the culture, customs, religions and ceremonies of Native American Puebloans. The mysticism of these traditions, and, similarly, Buddhism, was interpreted in varying degrees of subtlety on his canvases. Further, these canvases were frequently imbued with a play of light inspired by the Taos Mountains of America's Southwest, where Ron spent his summers. Many other ideas found their way into Slowinski's paintings. Ideas as diverse as the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, the paintings of Henri Matisse, the writings of the 16th century poet St. John of the Cross, Russian iconography, and motifs from indigenous art, to name a few, came together in fascinating ways. As a thoughtful person who had a lot to say and painted nearly every day, Ron found himself producing a number of series of works on canvas. Paintings with a common narrative, but different messages began to emerge.

All this activity while, from 1966 to 2005, Ron's day job was Professor of Drawing and Painting at the Kansas City Art Institute. He also curated exhibits, painted an 11 x 22 feet canvas for the Westinghouse Corporation, and raised a family. Upon his passing, Ron's home, studio and papers revealed a host of ideas, projects, and unrealized goals still in the works, and a life of curiosity well-lived.

Fortunately, a body of his works remain for us to see, learn from, celebrate, and enjoy. Where else might we experience intriguing and mysterious non-representational compositions fused with various cultural ideas, spiked with architecture, extraordinary in color, empowered by open space, and painted using a traditional Japanese hake brush?
Sheet measures 23 x 31 with a framed size of 30.5 x 38.25 inches.
Obviously the condition is very good, very clean, intact, no visible stain, damage, repair, punctures or tears. This work has not been examined outside the frame.
Provenance: The estate of Ronald Slowinski.
$800 - $1,200