When stone dust caused an asthma flare-up, Halfmoon Bay stone sculptor and artist Svetlana Sloan pivoted her creative energy. She looked around for homely, readily available materials with which she could try something different, something two dimensional. Experimenting with acrylic medium and paint, and making use of eggshells from her home baking, Sloan insists she’s just been “playing around.” However, it is safe to say that her diploma in Fine Arts from Langara College shows through in these delightful and touching eggshell mosaics. The experimentation has taken her in a very appealing direction. These “crafty” works have a real dignity. They show laborious detail, restraint, an assured sense of composition, and a painstaking approach to colour.
Many of Sloan’s images are of women and families, often likenesses of friends and relatives. She prefers the stylized and contemplative “sitting women” rather than anything “cutesy.” Although she is not alone herself, Sloan says she feels a particular empathy for “loneliness, contemplation, and getting old by yourself.” And there is a real depth of feeling to this work. Her colours are just a touch muted; her figures seem poised and quietly introspective.
A close-up shows that an image of a purple blouse is really made up of three or four colours: mauves, pinks, and purples, separately coloured and carefully interspersed to make a band of purple-like colour. Greens and background colours similarly show a rich and artful arrangement of like colours that gives a visual liveliness to both subject and background. She finishes her pieces with a clear coat of medium and a little gloss, so that they are protected and long-lasting.These images are not large, which makes this work that much more precious.
Sloan shows some of her work at Harbour Gallery in Madeira Park, but so far has not participated in the Art Crawls. Instead she has preferred to use that weekend to go about herself and visit the studios and galleries of others to see the array of work on offer
