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Capturing nature on canvas |
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Written by Andrew Powell
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Monday, 06 July 2009 |
“Art has been part of my life since I was itty bitty,” says Trish King Slaven, a local natural artist.
“Art has been part of my life since I was itty bitty,” says Trish King Slaven, a local natural artist.
After nearly 20 years of painting, the public is just now getting to see the life Slaven breathes into a canvas.
“Until now, I have pretty much kept it to myself,” Slaven said. “But, now my painting is consistent and at the stage I feel that it is ready to get out there.”
Art, or at least seeing the world in an artistic sense, entered Slaven’s life when she was 6 years old. Her family moved her from McCreary County to the farmland of Lincoln County. There, she said, her eyes opened to the natural and she began seeing things in a different light. Those scenes made their way into a sketchbook for several years, Slaven preserving the world around her one page at a time.
At age 16, the pencil drawings moved from her sketchbook onto canvas.
“My very first painting was of a waterfall with fall colors around it,” Slaven said. “I gave it to my mom for her birthday.”
From that point on, her quest to preserve the world around her has remained unchanged, Slaven laboring to teach herself to paint and to find her own artistic style. Today, her work has been thrust into the local circle of artisans and the area’s natural beauty solidified in acrylic paint; in a way comparable to still photography.
“Her attention to details is outstanding. The more you look the more you will find,” says Steve Perry, of the Mountain Crafts Center, which features Slaven’s art as well as that of a number of other local artisans. “Her work looks more like a picture than it does a painting.”
Slaven starts each painting - like those of Cumberland Falls, the Lincoln County farm she grew up on, an abandoned cabin in the woods - from a photograph. Nearly every finished piece begins with a real scene, a real place, recognizable to many and available to us all.
She sees her artwork as a way of preserving the ever-changing natural world and providing that venue to those who may not be able to experience the outdoors through any other means.
“I want to preserve all I can on canvas, as close to nature as possible and share the same beauty I see with others,” she said.
“Here is an example of a local scene that caught my eye, and now can no longer be seen,” Slaven said in an e-mail sent to The Voice. “The scene is of what once was that big, old tree at Kinne Street in Stearns. I don’t know the reasons why it was cut down here in the recent past, or if it fell down on it’s own. However, I was drawn to it back in the spring of 2007, with it’s branches reaching high and dressed in a rich green ivy, and I had to take a picture of it. All that can be seen now is an ivy-covered stump, which is still beautiful in its own right. Even the street sign has changed. And now, I feel a strong urge to paint that beautiful, old tree.”
Such scenes come to life on canvas, because they choose to be painted, not because Slaven chooses to paint them she says. Piece after piece is selected by flipping through pages of different photographs taken, Slaven, awaiting one to call her name.
As she brings her work to the local forefront, Slaven is also working to catalog more scenes around the area and began their preservation onto canvas. Though each finished piece takes a while to finish, she is constantly working on her next piece of art.
“Art is constant with me,” she said. “I wake up thinking about it and go to bed thinking about it. Even if I’m not painting with a brush I am painting in my head and going over new pieces in my head.”
The artwork of Trish King Slaven can be viewed at www.trishkingslaven.com or at the Mountain Crafts Center on Hwy. 90. Slaven is also available to have work commissioned and will be featured at several upcoming festivals and events.
She is just one of the many artists and crafters featured at the Mountain Crafts Center. Look for more on these artisans in upcoming editions of The Voice.
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