About

Tadhg Slater is a painter working between Provincetown, Massachusetts, Boston, and New York. His practice centers on large-scale figurative work developed through sustained studio labor. The materials shift with the work: old world preparation methods, including rabbit skin glue and gesso mixed with marble dust, apply to specific bodies of work; during winter, acrylics and industrial enamels take over, chosen for control in cold and against the pace of that work. Works approach architectural scale, developed through physical engagement over weeks and months.

Figures emerge in the course of painting and are repeatedly broken apart, dissolved, and reconstructed. The resulting surfaces record their own making, layers of decision and erasure that remain visible in the final work. The paintings hold structure and collapse simultaneously, sustaining a tension that resists resolution.

In the winter of 2025–2026, Slater moved full-time into an unheated concrete studio on the Provincetown waterfront. Thirteen paintings . the series Concrete Winter . were produced through the coldest months on large prepared surfaces in conditions that shaped the material as directly as the hand did. Paint froze. Canvas buckled. The conditions were part of the work.

Slater is the founder of EXHAUST, a small working painters' studio at 259 Commercial St Rear in Provincetown. A limited number of painters work alongside him in an environment built around sustained production, direct critique, and old-school studio discipline.