The Oxford Hotel presents Barbara Slater’s realistic, acrylic paintings of colorful spring and summer flowers.

Barbara Slater presents colorful images of seasonal blooms such as purple iris, red tulips and pink spring magnolia. In these and other dramatic images, she skillfully captures the subject’s subtleties such as a wilting petal drooping beneath a vibrant, flowering winter rose or the knobby growths of buds on magnolia branches.

The artist, an accomplished painter in oil, also demonstrates her considerable skill in acrylic. Her depiction of a hybrid ruffled tulip exemplifies the advantage of acrylic for such detailed imagery. With acrylic, painters can more quickly capture the actual open bloom in its full splendor with subtle color and lighting shifts, rather than working from photos as often necessitated with oil, more slow to dry.

Slater, creating oil paintings for over forty years, is well known for her portraits of horses, goats and cows that convey the subjects’ personalities on canvas. She notes her goal to similarly capture the “personalities” of these floral images. Slater notes, “I paint what I love, striving to paint passionate paintings…. not just workable paintings. I have a heart-felt connection to my work.” Her connection to these floral images is clearly apparent in her current exhibit.

Billye Turner, art consultant, coordinates the Oxford Hotel exhibition schedule. For additional information please contact her at 503-780-2828 or billyeturner@bendnet.com.