By Potoula Anagnostakos
Assistant Arts and Entertainment Editor
Professor Neill Slaughter, a professor of Fine Arts at LIU Post, will be giving his lecture, “The Maine Event,” in The End Zone on Oct. 9 during common hour as part of the School of Visual Performing Arts’ Dean’s Lecture Series. The lecture will feature a slideshow presentation highlighting Slaughter’s sabbatical painting project. Slaughter is a tenured full-time professor who has taught at LIU for 20 years, but has taught a total of 36 years as an art professor since 1978.
Slaughter described the images he painted during his yearlong sabbatical in Maine. “I painted ‘en plein air,’ or on location, to add to a series I had begun initially in Acadia National Park, Maine, several years ago,” Slaughter explained. “These new paintings will be part of a solo exhibit I’m having in California at Marymount University in Palos Verdes and San Pedro. I currently have one of these paintings on display in the Long Island Biennial Juried Exhibit at the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, New York, running from mid August, as well as two more of the paintings of Maine at the Salmagundi Art Club in NYC [from] September 29 to October 15.”
Not only has Slaughter been teaching fine arts courses at the university level since 1978, but he has also had his drawings and paintings exhibited nationally and internationally. He began his teaching career in Philadelphia at the Tyler School of Art of Temple University, before moving to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, who invited him to inaugurate their study abroad program at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, England. When he returned to the states in 1983, he relocated to California to teach at California State University, and then to Loyola Marymount University in 1987. He again went abroad to teach at the University of Kent in Canterbury, England in 1989, and then in 1993, Slaughter moved to Southampton, New York to begin teaching at Long Island University.
During his 36 years as an educator, Slaughter has traveled the world to teach, conduct research, and create art. His extensive travels have influenced what he paints, which often reflect the social conditions of his surroundings. In addition to his many years of teaching and traveling, he has collected a number of awards and honors. Among them, Slaughter has received a Ford Foundation Fellowship award in 1977 and 1978, a Scottish Arts Council Grant in 1980, an LMU Research Grant to Africa in 1988, and a Fulbright Fellowship to India in 1992. In 2003, he was awarded the David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching granted by LIU Post. In 2008, he mounted a 30-year retrospective, which included a full color catalogue funded by the institution.
Slaughter has had more than 28 solo exhibits of his own drawings and paintings since 1978, and participated in more than 75 national and international group exhibitions. His art has been reviewed by leading newspapers as well as magazines, and his work is in numerous public and private collections throughout the world. Galleries such as Island Weiss Gallery in New York, Peter Marcelle Gallery in Southampton, NY, Couturier Gallery in Los Angeles, CA, and Richard Demarco Gallery in Edinburgh, Scotland, have all represented his art.
All are welcome to the lecture, and lunch will be served.
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