Eric Slayton
Everyday, I watch the world around me moving faster and faster. In its chaotic wake, there are places, things and ideas that are inevitably left behind, forgotten. For me it is these very subjects, the flotsam of the changing tides, that merit special attention. I seek out that which has been left behind, and there I find my inspiration.
My perspective has been shaped by my life's path. Beginning with my formal education in the natural sciences and continuing through my work with wild animals and plants, the natural world nurtured me with an ever-flowing stream of inspiration. Scientific study deals with reality on a very analytical level. My concentration on ecology and environmental studies has given me a keen appreciation of the systems that support life.
Just as significant has been a move to rural New York. This alone has provided me the inspirational space to explore my creative pursuits and continue to refine my personal vision.
Terra 
Glass Eyes 
At first glance, the photographs in Eric Slayton’s series, “Glass Eyes” appear to be nature studies, shots of animals taken in the wilds of Africa or Greenland. But there’s something suspiciously formal about them, a posed quality despite the blurring around the edges that creates the impression of motion. The Walrus Bull from Greenland, for example, looks like an elder statesman, sitting for a portrait. You soon realize that they are photographs of museum dioramas, all from the Museum of Natural History in New York: the gazelle and zebras, the ostrich and falcon are all frozen in time, mid-stride or mid-flight. Slayton is an environmental scientist as well as a photographer, and his background informs this work. One could read these pictures as a critique on industrialized societies, and their tendency to sanitize nature and keep it behind glass. But they’re also clearly, and maybe primarily, about the diversity and amazing variety to be found in the natural world.
Techno-Color Eyes
A continuation of the original Glass Eyes series but different in the obvious sense that these are in color and in the less obvious way the color adds a layer that opens the work becoming less real in a sense and more plastic. Without color the tetures in the dioramas and mounted specimens can look life like but add color and they become less real and more apparently the product of an urban produced wildlife experience. Images in this series are not just about the animal life but also the enviorments and through the magic of color transforms them into plastic nature.
Other Works
Resume
For more information please visit www.ericslayton.com
