"Fantasy Flowers" - Paintings by Claudia Slater at the Watchung Arts Center

During the month of February, the Lower Gallery of the Watchung Arts Center will feature “Fantasy Flowers”, an exhibition of the paintings of Basking Ridge artist, Claudia Slater. An opening reception will be held on Sunday, February 7 at 1 PM, with an opportunity to meet the artist.
Basking Ridge resident Claudia Slater is a New Jersey self-taught multimedia artist born in 1949. Coming from a family of artists, at a young age she loved drawing people and was able to capture her subjects with striking accuracy. Her art consists mostly of flowers, portraits and recently has transitioned into fantasy.
She says of this exhibit: “I paint mostly large flowers and incorporate women in some, as the woman’s form seems to fit with the flower. I love painting the delicate features of a woman as well as capturing the beauty of flowers. Had I my choice my apartment would be continually filled with vases of flowers
Miss Slater demonstrates a highly developed sense of color, composition and keen attention to detail. She captures the attention of observers through her dramatic style of painting.
Her large paintings are now in acrylic although for her smaller work she sometimes uses water color. To achieve the smooth look to the skin on her portraits she uses layers upon layers of color washes.
She and her family moved to Pennsylvania when her two children were in grade school. Their home had a storefront in which she sold hand painted items such as hat boxes, bird houses, furniture and paintings. She also taught art classes in her shop which covered an array of things from marbleizing techniques, hand-painted gourds to a two hour session of techniques for painting flowers which she developed over the years to teach even those who thought they had no creative abilities.
She is currently retired and welcomes the time to paint and build her collection and gives several tours to local residents.

The Watchung Arts Center is located on the circle at 18 Stirling Road, Watchung, NJ. The Gallery is open Tues.-Fri. noon-5pm and Sat. 10:00am-3:00pm. For more information go to watchungarts.org or call 908 753 0190.

Captions for photos:

1) Claudia Slater
2) Painting by Claudia Slater