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Meditations on Life:
Artist's Statement Could you read a book written in gibberish? Throughout the history of mankind most paintings have been understandable, pictures with a message. Symbolism at the turn of the century showed promise of continuing significant realism but it collapsed into cubism, followed by chaos.
Generally, it seems many people don't like to dwell on the subject of disintegration -- hence some of my pictures are often deplored. However, New York Herald Tribune critic Emily Genauer wrote in 1956 that "Underhill is fascinated, not saddened by the processes of life." Quite true -- so it goes. Slayton Underhill Curator's Statement After a long career as an illustrator and portraitist, Slayton Underhill began to paint from his heart relatively late in life. Beginning with "Brook Bottom", painted in 1960, Underhill began to explore the themes of time and life, and eventually of death , disintegration and decay. Underhill, now 86, works largely from photographs. He paints in the layered, disciplined manner of the Old Masters, giving his canvasses a depth and luster and liveliness which belie the subject matter. Whether painting frogs' eggs, as in the painting of the same name from 1980; the twisted, bare branches of "The Agony", from 1987; or the rigid face of his dead wife in the painting titled only with its date, "3/17/84", Underhill's attention to detail draws the viewer in to ever deeper layers of symbol and meaning. Although the subject matter may not be immediately appealing, these paintings reveal the deep wisdom of a long life, well observed and well lived. Deborah Sokolove |
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The artists who created the works of art shown here own the
copyrights to them. send comments or questions about the gallery to
the curator at: |
My
paintings still seem to be out of style. However I can hardly
believe that common sense among critics and an intelligent public
will not eventually demand a return to expertly made creations
that reward the viewer with a lingering examination of the
artist's imagination and thought. 
These
paintings I've made which I call essays look to the past and,
hopefully, to the future. They were originally born in 1960 when
so many national magazines succumbed to television. For eighteen
years I had illustrated many of their stories and advertisements.
Now their demise prompted an exploration into so-called fine art.
A New York gallery agreed to show the twenty paintings I had
produced in 1960. None sold. It was hopeless. So I became a
portrait painter. 
During the 1950s
photography had been my occasional escape from commercial work
into self expression. Influenced by Edward Weston and Ansel Adams
I sought to find the essence of the Adirondack wilderness in the
minutia of grasses, ice, tangles of free limbs, rocks, fungi,
etc. The paintings amplified the symbolism of the photographs,
used them as a point of departure into the realm of imagination
and relatively sardonic dissertations on the inevitability of
decay followed by non-existence. Even the pre-Cambrian rock of my
beloved low Adirondack mountains is all that is left of towering
peaks. And this rock, too, will inevitably crack, crumble, or
melt into nothingness.