Photos of Eva Slater & her family in the 1960's

These are some photos of Eva Slater and her family taken in 1961. Her husband John Slater was an inventor and Chief Scientist at Autonetics. He loved art and painted himself (desert landscapes), plus he made exotic musical instruments such as the Egyptian harp shown above. The photos were all taken in the main studio of the house where Eva worked, which was a large A frame structure with a huge window which overlooked Orange County. The bottom photo shows John and Eva with their two children, Dan and Miriam.

Eva Slater painted by Harry Carmean

Eva Slater knew Harry Carmean for many years, starting in the 1950's at Art Center and in the 1980's she ended up being Harry Carmean's mother in law. Carmean first started collecting her work in the 1950's and owned the much admired Sun over the Ocean painting mentioned in the previous blog. The bottom painting by Carmean is of Eva holding her grand daughter Erin who is about a year old. The top painting is a portrait of Eva with her daughter Miriam Slater, who is also an artist.

Eva SLater's painting process

Eva Slater's paintings went through a lot of changes before they were finally finished as can be seen in the earlier version of "Sun over Ocean"above with its cadmium red triangles around the sun. (The photo was printed from a slide and the image was reversed.) In many of her paintings she often would render all the triangles in one color, only to repaint them out in another color later because everything had to be "just right". When it came to her art, Eva Slater was a perfectionist, especially in the area of color and this is one reason her paintings have such an exquisite palette - a lot of time and trial and error went into the making of each work. Some of Slater's paintings took over a year to complete because of the detail and relentless repainting but she always felt the results were worth the effort.

Eva's paintings in the Three Viewpoints exhibit in Santa Barbara

Eva Slater was in this "Three Viewpoints" exhibit with Harry Carmean and daughter Miriam Slater in Santa Barbara. All three artists work in completely different styles, Eva works in the Hard-edge manner, Miriam in a Japanese style and Harry works in a classic European style, however the underlying aesthetic principles used by these artists is the same and so there are just as many similarities as there are differences.

Panamint Shoshone basketry book by Eva Slater

Not only was Eva Slater an accomplished artist, she was also a scholar, writer and avid collector of American American basketry. In the seventies and eighties she put together a beautiful collection of baskets (that was later donated to museums) and wrote a well received book on basketry titled Panamint Shoshone basketry. The book is available at the Poetic Eye Gallery online. Slater also wrote for Sotheby's Auction House as well as other publications and was highly regarded in the field.

Fire and the work of Eva Slater

The subject of fire is a recurrent theme throughout Eva Slater’s work and her life. From the powerful sun paintings she did on through her last painting of the mythological Icarus’ failed attempt to fly to the sun, its radiant force permeated her work. Fire was something Slater was familiar from her earlier days in Berlin, Germany during WW2 in which her house was burnt to the ground after getting hit by a bomb. Later her large and magnificent sun painting, considered one of her most important works, was destroyed in a fire in a collector’s home. Towards the end of her painting career she completed a series of drawings and paintings depicting Icarus with his wings melted by the sun, just before he fell to the earth to his death. Her fascination with fire can also be seen in her volcano paintings, which show their fiery interior displayed in a cross section of the earth. So, while Slater’s work is quite beautiful, there is also an underlying danger that smolders underneath.

Eva Slater early life drawings

Eva Slater studied art and life drawing in Berlin, Germany (where top photo was taken) as well as Art Center in the late 1940's and early 1950's. Although she went on to paint landscapes and abstract hard-edge paintings, she had a solid traditional art training, which is one reason her later work was so good - it had a strong foundation. Slater's feeling for line and a more minimalist approach can be seen in her early works because the desire for simplicity was a part of her personality. A number of the abstract painters working in Slater's time (1950's and 60's), like Slater, had a good solid figurative background and it made for a more aesthetically sound abstract paintings. They really knew what they were doing back then.....