Life & Work with Slate Quagmier

Today we’d like to introduce you to Slate Quagmier.

Hi, Slate. It’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us. To start, could you share some of your backstory with our readers?
I took my first art class on a lark during my senior year of high school. I had an extra period in my schedule and needed to take something. Just a few months into the school year, I was hooked. I learned how to draw that year. I learned to paint years later. Again, I had some free time and took a painting course at community college while I was out of work. I was taught by a master, LA-based artist, M.A. Peers. I took two semesters of her intensive courses. We started with the foundations using a modern, restrictive palette to get us focused on color mixing. I fumbled around for years, knowing how to draw but not paint. I wished I had taken the painting courses sooner, but maybe that struggle was exactly what I needed. When I took the first course, I was ready and knew what skills I was lacking.

Would it have been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It hasn’t been a challenging journey. I went to college in Rhode Island and earned my master’s degree from UCLA. I’ve always been a magpie with my education. I studied art, chemistry, physics, and computer science at five schools. My science background sometimes shows up in my art directly. I worked in a materials science lab for a few years, making coatings and films. When I got serious about painting, I approached it like it was a coating I was working on in the lab. Many of these films I made had optical properties; that’s what a painting is: a movie with optical properties. It also really facilitated my love for acrylic painting in particular. Acrylic is a modern material made in a lab, an environment I’m familiar with.

I was floundering for a while after college. I didn’t know what art I wanted to do. I read How to Get Hung by Molly Barnes. She highly recommended that artists choose painting unless they already had another medium in mind that they wanted to pursue. I took her advice, and that’s how I became a painter. It was only much later that I fell in love with it. The hardest thing about being an artist is figuring out what to do. I still needed to determine what kind of painter I wanted to be and what subject to paint. I stumbled into still life by accident. I overheard another student talk about how much he hated still life in art class one day. I felt defensive because I was working on a still-life painting then. I started listing the merits of the genre in my head. It was only at that moment I realized how much I liked it. Eventually, I came to focus exclusively on still life. I wouldn’t have had the idea to do it without him.

Thanks. What else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I am a painter working in still life. The ideas connected to the things we leave behind are lovely. Sometimes, just a single object can tell so many stories. I draw from a broad skill set in my current series of acrylic still-life paintings about contemporary themes. After years of being obsessed with color mixing, I’ve focused more on composition. It’s been a rewarding experience working on this project. I get to indulge my simultaneous love for acrylic as a medium and Baroque art.

What matters most to you?
My friends and family matter the most to me. I would only get very far with them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.slatequagmier.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slatequagmier/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/slate-quagmier-39bbb79b?trk=public_post_feed-actor-name