biography

Charles Sluga spent every Sunday of his 13th year with Carmen Puls, an elderly Artist in the small Victorian town of Great Western where he spent his childhood. On these Sundays Carmen not only taught him how to paint in acrylics, but also introduced him to famous artists and their paintings through her extensive library of art books. While attending these lessons he learnt the skills of observation, composition and the plein air approach and he developed a love of art.

After completing secondary school his path took him in a different direction and he completed a Degree in Mathematics and a Graduate Diploma of Education, but the love of painting never left him. Shortly after completing his studies he visited an art exhibition and decided to follow his heart and become an artist.

He attended art classes and concentrated on drawing and oil painting for 3 years. It was only after leaving these classes that he pursued watercolour painting seriously and this is when his true learning began. After years of trial and error, frustration and joy, copious amounts of reading of books and studying the great artists of the past and present, he finally began to see results. Exhibiting, winning exhibitions and selling paintings all added to his confidence. Now after 15 years of being a professional artist he cannot imagine doing anything else.

One of the biggest turning points in his career was when he journeyed to the U.S.A. in 1999 to specifically study two artists whom he considers to be two of the best. He closely studied the works of John Singer Sargent at a Retrospective exhibition in Boston and had the fantastic opportunity to have a private viewing and to study his unframed works at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York. Even though Sargent passed away in 1925, he considers him to be his greatest teacher.

He also took the opportunity to study the works of Andrew Wyeth (a contrasting artist to Sargent) who has had an immense impact on his work, not only technically, but also from a philosophical point of view. He is indebted to these men, and since this visit he feels his work has changed and has headed in a new direction. In essence he feels his work is truer and freer than ever before.

Today he spends his time painting, teaching watercolour painting, running overseas tours and exhibiting. He has also written many articles for the Australian Artist magazine. He enters a number of selected competitions and has won many awards, the most prestigious being the highly coveted A.M.E Bale award. This exhibition is considered to be Australia's premier exhibition of realist and figurative art.

He considers himself to be in the artistic sense, a paradox. He sees himself as neither a traditional nor a contemporary painter, and yet he is both. He does not prescribe to any particular school of art - he paints what he paints, not because it fits into any category or school of painting, but simply because it is how he sees, feels and wishes to communicate. If he can raise the spirits and/or emotionally touch people, making their lives richer (as Sargent and Wyeth have for him) through his painting, then he is happy.