The Sound of Sleat: A Painter's Life

by Jon Schueler, Russell Banks (Introduction), Magda Salvesen (Editor)

The remarkable autobiography of an American artist's dreams, passions, and work

As an American abstract expressionist painter and early protege of Leo Castelli, Jon Schueler lived and worked among the country's most gifted Clyfford Still, Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Jasper Johns, and many others. Schueler was mysteriously driven to connect nature with a deeply personal passion. In the late 1950s, he travelled for the first time to Mallaig, a town in western Scotland on the Sound of Sleat, where the dramatic landscape inspired his art and continued to influence him throughout his career.

Over nearly thirty years, as he painted, Schueler worked on this book. In it, he struggled to define what it was that compelled him to paint and wrestled with a conflict that confronts all artists--how to strike a balance between the need to create in solitude and the desire for human intimacy. The Sound of Sleat tells the story of a passionate life and offers a fascinating look at the New York art world in the latter half of this century and an astonishing window on art, hope, despair, and creativity.

384 pages, Hardcover

First published January 15, 1999

Reviews

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's nothing else like this in the Abstract Expressionist era's literature of fact or fiction. Uniquely contextual at times (perspective on the New York scene, altho the Scottish Highlands are much further up the dramatis personae than Rothko), deeply personal at most other times. Memoir, diary, letters from others interwoven. "A north wind blowing off the sea promised clarity." (p. 63)

[Michael Pearce · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrific, wonderful treat of a book. A secret little window into the mind of an artist.