Art & Soul, Nicole Slater

Words / Sam Cavallo, Equestrienne Magazine.

I look for shadows, I look for texture. I feel that it is actually really helpful to be around them all day long, then I go and paint them. I need to make sure I know my subject, and I do. I know them so well. I know them more than anything I’ve ever painted.

Most of us know Nicole and Billy are both horsey. They’ve both ridden since childhood, met at Pony Club & have a few racehorses and rescue horses at home.

Their house and stables sit on top of a steep hill. It’s elevated & totally private. The property rolls away. Nicole’s studio sits to one side with well-fenced horse paddocks and a large arena down further. She comes out to greet me wearing a navy polo, jodhpurs and cowboy boots. It’s a vibe. We jump in a UTV and head over to the neighbour’s place to meet Regis, a grey Percheron stallion who features in her dazzling works, ‘Regis’, ‘Blue’ and ‘Dream.’ “Isn’t he just so amazing!” She says, climbing in through the rails of the fence. “He’s so big and hairy!” She’s not wrong, he’s possibly the biggest horse I’ve ever seen. Not the tallest, but the biggest.

While she poses for a few photos, she tells me about her collaboration with Coolmore, having been invited to display one of her works at a VIP night they were hosting during the Magic Millions Carnival. ‘I’d painted the collection and all the exhibitions I’d tried to plan were constantly being cancelled through Covid. So when they offered to share the space it was a great opportunity as I hadn’t been able to show any of my pieces in real-life. I thought this would be a great way of getting my work out there to a new audience.’

The logistics of moving huge paintings (her works are all largescale… up to 3m x 5m) takes a bit of planning at the best of times. When it’s just before Christmas and they have to be on site, fully installed a few days after New Year, it turns into a nightmare. Transporting a framed canvas was just not going to be possible in that timeframe.

“I came up with the idea that I could paint one of their horses for the event which would be more fitting anyway. If I was going to do it, I decided it had to be the best piece to date. I had just come onboard as an ambassador for da Vinci art brushes, there are only two of us in Australia, so I was trialling them and had a lot of access to new brushes. I started trying a different technique which gave me a more realistic texture of hair. I wanted to cover the entire horse with that full-on detail of hair and texture which takes a long time”.

“I chose an image of the stallion Justify. Coolmore were running an incentive that the first of his progeny to win a race will win a Ferrari, so that’s where the collab came into it. It was a bit surreal when they said, ‘we have to go back to Ferrari HQ in Italy for approval’, because I had thought I was just dealing with Coolmore. Ferrari is quite strict who they associate with because they are such a high-end luxury brand. So, when they approved me as a brand to be in that room with them that night I then had Ferrari AND one of the largest studs in the world to represent. I needed to make sure I did my brand and their brands justice. I needed to make sure it was perfect. I was so nervous; I had no guidance from anyone. No one wanted to see it. They put their trust in me that whatever I wanted to do would be fine. I dragged Billy into the studio halfway through his mowing to double-check what I was about to do was going to be good enough, because once I started, there wasn’t time to re-do it. It’s the first time I’ve given myself such a challenge. I really feel that by pushing myself harder I discovered more skills for myself and it was just an opportunity to start perfecting everything I’ve been working on over the last two years.”

Justify

Deciding she’s been nibbled on enough; Nicole climbs out of Regis’ paddock and we hop back into the UTV. I’ve seen the painting, so I know she got it done. It’s impressive and powerful, an incredible evocation of the stallion. His pose has all the aggression of a Ferrari, revving. So how did she end up getting it there? “Well, I rang Mark Chapman from Chapman and Bailey who I deal with all the time for my art supplies and said to him ‘how am I going to make this work? I need to have this painting ready only a few days after New Year’s… on the Gold Coast... What am I going to do?’ He said, ‘I will fly in and make sure it gets stretched and framed onsite in the Ferrari showroom for you.’ So I then had to carry a 3m x 2m painting up with me on the plane. It went underneath. I was having an absolute heart attack. Everything was riding on this painting! It had to survive the flight and get there without getting lost. The framing was cut a month prior, so we were relying on all these pieces of the puzzle to make sure that it was going to go together. It was insane. Bill and I spent four hours setting it up in the space and then good old Covid struck again and the night got cancelled! It was unbelievable. But Tom (from Coolmore) bought the painting. I know, again, not everything goes to plan, but I couldn’t have been happier because I’d pushed myself and I was ready for it because I had spent two years preparing for that moment.”

We continue to chat as we cruise back across the property. Nicole tells me she was dyslexic as a child but was always ‘extremely driven’ to make art her career. Her parents didn’t really know what to think when she’d told them, ‘Oh, I’m going to be an artist,’ but her Dad, Nick, built her an art studio in the backyard, helped make canvases and set up her market stalls. Sadly, he died in a bike accident when Nicole was just 21. “I had that moment where I knew that he was my biggest supporter and I hadn’t done anything. So that is one of the things that has always driven me to continue because I want to make him proud. If he was here, he would be like, holy… You’re still doing it!”

Nicole and Billy had only been together for a year at the time and she told me it felt somewhat like a changing of the guard when her Dad passed. Billy became that person for her and has been ever since. “Even though I did put my career on hold to a degree, he’s been a huge supporter in what I do as well. He’s always made sure I’ve had whatever I needed, even when I said ‘I’m going to rent a space in Richmond’, so I could keep trying, even if things didn’t work out. I started this venture 20 years ago. It’s been a long journey but I never gave up. I could have had it easier but I like to push myself, be harder on myself, want more from myself. I really thank Bill for his patience because it probably would have been a lot easier if I’d just stayed at home, looked after the kids and made sure that dinner was on the table. My father and Billy had to be the most patient people to just be around me sometimes. I was forever changing the house. Billy would come home and I’d have sanded the whole table top off or something. One time I painted a wall pink because I decided it would go really well with a painting. He still says, ‘Oh my God, remember the pink wall!’ I think painting is probably the best thing for me otherwise I’d be demolishing the house every week, reinventing the wheel. I can’t stop.”

Arriving back at her place, we pull up outside a smaller paddock where two goats, two sheep and two dogs all crowd the gate bleeting, barking and baa-ing. Once inside, Nicole sits down on the ground and they all mob her. There’s Mary the sheep and Alfie the Shepherd both in her lap. Mary is butting her head against Nicole’s and she’s trying to stop the dog licking her face. Buddy is jumping up on me and Chip the goat gives me an inquiring nudge with his little, but rather pointy, horns. There’s a lot going on, it’s pretty wild! The sheep and goats were all born at an abattoir where they would normally be processed with the other animals.

These though, are very lucky to have been saved by friends of the family and hand raised. There’s a lot of fur and paw prints on us by the time we get to the studio. Nicole unlocks the big glass doors and slides them open to reveal an inviting, light-filled space with white walls and high ceilings. There are two canvases stapled to the walls. One is a Friesian trotting towards me, the other the profile of a horsehead. One is more worked than the other. I can see how she’s starting to build the layers with colours and textures. I feel privy to a process that takes place in private. The synergy of paint and linen, hundreds of hours, thousands of brushstrokes. It’s something between what can be defined and the divine. It’s special to be here, to share space. I remind myself to snap a few photos. They’re all candid, nothing posed. ‘‘Everything I’ve been doing over the last 2 years has been through lockdown”, she says, “I’ve been very fortunate to have my studio in my backyard. The world stopped, my husband wasn’t travelling, I didn’t have all the distractions of kids and school, it was the first time ever I was able to put 100% of my time into it. It’s pretty cool to see how the detail has evolved and also the techniques I’m using. It’s all been trial and error. I think art is through the artist. I have never been through a school or studied art. There’s no right or wrong with art. My style is my style. I don’t want to know what everyone else is doing...I don’t want to doubt myself.”

Nicole Slater & Leo

I asked her how she manages to separate her work life from home life? “It’s a tricky one! I put my studio in a paddock full of goats and sheep. I’m surrounded by horses, I’m with horses all day long. I knew from the start when we designed our home that the studio had to be somewhere apart that I do not see every day so I can escape it mentally. I think it’s really important to not feel like I live at my work. Especially with art, you are giving so much of yourself that it becomes really draining. I have little breaks with Chip and Kathy (the goats). I can sometimes just sit out there for hours. My lifestyle inspires me, it always has. I never switch-off, I don’t think artists can, but having a separate space is really important.”

From the studio we wander down to the bottom paddocks where the horses are. Leo and his mum, Zen are in one paddock with the kids’ pony. Leo is a loudly marked paint. He’s very striking with his bold blaze and blue eyes. He walks straight over and puts his nose to Nicole’s face, sharing breath. The others wander over for pats and scratches too. Zen came to them as a neglected and frightened mare with baby Leo who was only a few months old at the time and totally unhandled. You would never know to look at them. They are fat, shiny and friendly! Nicole and Billy have done all their rehabilitation and even started them under saddle themselves. Leo (named after Leonardo da Vinci) and Nicole clearly have a special connection. “Out of all the Stables Collection, I think he is my best piece. I think the reason is that he’s got blue eyes. He’s got four different colours going on in his face. He’s got a pink nose and this amazing transparent line around the outside of his white blaze. To play with all that in a painting was really cool. I’m not selling ‘Leo’, he’s the only piece that I will not sell.”

“When I started painting horses I didn’t anticipate doing what is now the Stables Collection but I think it has come about because we’re around horses more than ever before. Now that I’m painting them, I’m studying them more. I get obsessed by their detail now. I know the direction of hair. That’s so important, especially when I’m painting such high detail. I’m constantly perfecting my skill, creating the shadows and just playing with the detail of the 1%. Like the whiskers have their own shadows. I love playing with whiskers! Half in shade, half in sun. And the nostril hairs, I obsess over nostril hairs now, like it’s my favourite part! And the eyelashes! I love ideas like that. You might look at my paintings at first and notice the mane and the eye, but if you start to really look, you’re going to notice details that you just didn’t see at first glance. Now when I take a photo I think of all those things and when I’m looking for my next reference image I look for movement, I look for shadows, I look for texture. I feel that it is actually really helpful to be around them all day long, then I go and paint them. I need to make sure I know my subject, and I do. I know them so well. I know them more than anything I’ve ever painted.”

Nicole seems totally in her element surrounded by these horses, who are so different from the tradition of hacks she rode as a young girl. She grew up competing in the show ring and won many Royal Show titles. These days she prefers a horse-centric approach to riding with good horsemanship the main focus for her and Billy. They both enjoy attending clinics and do a lot of groundwork and desensitisation, even with their Thoroughbreds. “We live and breathe it every day. We’ve got our broodmares and the foals at home now. We’re walking them over tarps and bouncing balls off them. I hope we don’t make them too quiet,” she jokes, “We still want them to run!” Slater Thoroughbreds is

a boutique breeding program that produces a few quality foals per season. The Slaters sold their first yearling through the Gold Coast Magic Millions Sale in 2019 (racing name Inner Spirit) and a Redoute’s Choice son at the 2021 sales. Both colts are out of their prized broodmare, Inishowen, who is a multiple race winner herself. The Slaters produced two fillies this year, ‘Polly’ by Pride of Dubai and ‘Pretzel’ by superstar sire, Snitzel. All their horses are part of the family, including the ones bred for racing. The kids feed them and give them their paddock names.

There’s no pretence with Nicole, she’s natural, expressive and incredibly generous. “Don’t listen to negative people who are trying to bring you down, listen to the ones who want to lift you up. I want to be that person for others. There’s a lot of positive energy that comes from me, I like to give energy to people. My friends say I’ve never changed. I pride myself on that. They also say I’m absolutely mad!” she adds with a laugh, “I love adrenaline. I’m good for jumping out of a plane, I’ve done that 3 times.” Like I said, she’s a vibe.