Diamonds II

Jeanette Pasin Sloan (b. 1946, Chicago, Illinois) is an artist whose work intertwines the intimate details of domestic life with a strong drive for artistic innovation. She earned an MFA from the University of Chicago, where she studied art history incessantly. Sloan’s father was an Italian immigrant who founded Radio Flyer wagons in the U.S. He often took her back to Europe to see the great artworks of history. Sloan was particularly enamored with works by Leonardo, Titian, Vermeer, and Morandi and studied the works of her perceived “competitors.” She dreamed of being able to paint like them or better.

Traditional gender roles often limited women’s creative pursuits. As a young mother in a small apartment, Sloan put her children to bed early so she could paint at her kitchen table studio. She found meaning in the reflective surfaces of her kitchen—her chrome toaster and silver teacups. She sees these everyday objects as something we all share and know intimately. She aims to create the most precise, exquisitely beautiful composition from these objects, analogous to striving for possibility and excellence in our own daily lives.