Paul Sloggett

Paul Sloggett (born August 7, 1950) is a Canadian abstract painter known for his use of geometric shapes and patterns in creating paintings and for his many teaching and administrative appointments at OCAD University, Toronto, where he served as a full professor since 2001 and as Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Art. He now teaches at Seneca Polytechnic.

Biography Sloggett was born in Campbellford, Ontario and grew up in Oshawa, where he attended McLaughlin Collegiate in 1969–1970. He was directed into his career by his art teacher at McLaughlin, Murray Hofstetter. His early work was influenced by shows at the Robert McLaughlin Gallery in Oshawa and specifically by one work by Richard Diebenkorn shown by the gallery. In 1987, the gallery curated the travelling exhibition, Paul Sloggett: Twelve Years. Sloggett still has a connection to Oshawa. In 2016, he was invited to exhibit New Paintings in 2016 in the University of Ontario Institute of Technology's Regent Theatre in Oshawa at the reception for a screening of the video Water Colour. He lives and has his studio in nearby Newcastle, Ontario.

Sloggett is a member of what has been described as the third generation of artists inspired in their painting style by Painters Eleven in Ontario as well as painters in New York, such as, for Sloggett, Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland. He was a second-year student at the Ontario College of Art (OCAD) when Dennis Burton became head of the painting and drawing department in 1970. Burton hired for the department painters such as Graham Coughtry and Gordon Rayner that were Sloggett's teachers. Sloggett also knew and admired Jack Bush. From the time he graduated, his art work has followed a consistent course: works which emphasized the picture-as-object with strongly asserted geometric shapes combined with spatial illusions in works on canvas, in collage on paper or in prints. He sometimes has been called a Neo-Constructivist, but a painterly one.

Sloggett's art was recognized for its innovations while still a student at the Ontario College of Art. Upon graduation, he was awarded an OCAD Teaching Assistantship Scholarship to work under the direction of Royden Rabinowitch, chair of Experimental Art (1974). His work on the painting scene was quickly noted as remarkable, even "astounding" for its paint quality by Art International magazine. Geometric structure is his method towards making work. "I always felt as if I was building paintings as opposed to painting pictures”, he has said. The Art Gallery of Ontario included his work in Four Canadian painters, (1976) and it was featured again in 1977 in 14 Canadians: a Critic's Choice, an exhibition held at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, curated by Andrew Hudson. Slogett is represented by the Hatch Gallery, Bloomfield, Ontario.

Public collections Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa, Ontario