My recent stay at the Ray Wells Dune Shack in Truro, Massachusetts, US could be described by Timothy Leary’s famous statement “turn on, tune in, drop out.” Indeed, I turned on my brain to the nature frequency, tuned into the light, sounds, and forms around me, and dropped out of mainstream society for the week! Focused on printmaking with objects found in the dunes, I became interested in re-placing those painted grasses, leaves and sticks back into their home environment even with their new wild colors. All of the flotsam and jetsam you see here were used in the dune shack print series hanging on the walls of the Four Eleven Gallery right now!

Provincetown is famous for showcasing gardens of all types and sizes. This body of work focuses on the changing light, varying forms, and shifting tones I face as I walk through Provincetown’s gardens at night on walks with my dog, Pepepr. Night garden experiences take on a very different feel than daytime sojourns for the botanically inclined.

In this work, I prefer a primarily abstract approach as it allows for a freedom of expression that figurative depiction does not accommodate for me regarding this subject. My work is about exploring the progression of color and shape with the embrace of unpredictable movements and combinations. These works celebrate unexpected and sometimes confusing beauty in a way that may possibly support people to conjure questions about form and wonder.

Recently, I was given a week-long residency at one of the Peaked Hill Trust’s coveted dune shacks located in the Provincelands (May 17-26, 2025). The Ray Wells shack is perched high up on stilts, affording it a view of both sunrise and sunset across the undulating dunes. Captured by the lines and movement of the dune grass oceans and currents around me, I began to go down the rabbit hole of ghost printing. I had originally planned to stick to a muted pallette of colors I was predisposed to associating with the dunes - gray and beige sands, sage and sap greens from the low slung vegetation, sky and ocean blues and pops of pink and white from the rosa rugosa that abounds this time of year…but as I sunk into the majesty of seeing the light without electricity, I saw so many other colors that I decided to portray. The velvety maroons and Prussian blues of 2 am under the stars while hiking up to the outhouse, for example. Or the neon pink and peach melba honey-golden light of the 5 am sunrise. And so much more. I hope you will enjoy this gallery of images from this dune grass series and a little glimpse into my work table inside the shack.

Elspeth Slayter paticipates in artist’s residency in Tucson, Arizona

Inspired by the unspoken memories of flotsam and jetsam in marine trash, Elspeth Slayter’s new series of monotypes finds its way to Four Eleven Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts

Elspeth Slayter works on a monotype in her colorful studio - with her imagination in the background -at 74 Shank Painter in Provincetown, MA.