Kevin Sloan’s paintings of endangered species set against surreal, Edenic backdrops, remind the viewer how much beauty we have left to lose.
x 1.5 in. Courtesy the artist.
Denver, Colorado | kevinsloan.com | @kevinpsloan
In one of Kevin Sloan’s recent paintings, A Grand Finale (2025), a giant dolphin emerges from the sea, perched mid-dive over a blooming opuntia on fire. The Migrant (2024) depicts an emperor penguin standing balefully beneath an orange tree, atop a pile of glistening tropical fruit. In Evacuation at Low Tide (2025), a zebra, also at the seashore, regards the viewer in profile, a bouquet of conch shells and coral branches resting on its hindquarters, where a roost of monarch butterflies takes flight. Sloan’s lush and photorealistic acrylic paintings are amusing and uncanny at once, immediately striking and intensely detailed.
Raised by a traditional and devout Catholic family in Iowa, Sloan moved to Tucson for graduate school at the University of Arizona, where he found a very different interpretation of his childhood religion. “Exposure to a far richer, slightly ‘pagan’ version of Catholicism was thrilling to me,” he writes in an email. “The rituals, the saints, the symbols and beliefs all came alive in a new way.” Though Sloan is no longer a practicing Catholic, the “mystery and emotion” he found in Catholic traditions in the Southwest still influence his depictions of animals, their presentation on par with that of rulers or saints, venerated and central.
Now based in Denver, Sloan has lived in art capitals around the country, including San Francisco, Key West, New York, New Orleans, and Santa Fe. During his time living in New Mexico, Sloan learned about Indigenous American beliefs, including the idea that all beings are sacred and alive. In Santa Fe, “this wonderful and challenging mixture of cultures and values is alive and very present, not just a memory found in a history book.”
Sloan’s work extols the beauty of wildlife and the natural world during a time of vast environmental destruction, of rising trillionaires and shrinking habitats. He recognizes how easy it is to become overwhelmed by despair, and hopes his work reminds us what we still have to protect and offers a balm in its beauty. “The sorrow and the magnificence are happening at the same time,” he says, noting that at least for now, he’s had enough of people-first work, and will continue to elevate the sublimity of nonhuman beings.
