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Kevin Sloan's The Worrier: on its way home from the US Embassy in Australia

While you can enjoy Kevin Sloan's painting The Worrier as a puzzle in the comfort of your dining room, the actual painting has spent the last 4 years on-loan to the...

While you can enjoy Kevin Sloan's painting The Worrier as a puzzle in the comfort of your dining room, the actual painting has spent the last 4 years on-loan to the US Embassy in Canberra, Australia.  

It was sent there as part of the US Art in Embassies program , started by JFK, which curates selections of American artworks for our embassies, borrowed from museums and private citizens. 

The Worrier was picked by Obama's Australian Ambassador John Barry and his husband Curtis Yee (making John Barry, in 2013, the first openly-gay ambassador to a G-20 nation). Yee blogged about selecting their artwork, 

"A few weeks before leaving Washington for Australia, John and I met with a senior curator at the State Department to discuss the exhibition we envisioned.  We requested the focus to be on endangered wildlife since John and I are committed to their conservation.   Through the curator’s tireless efforts over the past year, sixteen beautiful and thought provoking pieces, including paintings, bronzes, wood carvings and photographs, were loaned by American artists to the embassy residence in Canberra. 

One of our favorites is a painting of a pelican entitled “Birds of America: The Worrier” by Kevin Sloan from Colorado.  The subject of the painting is depicted as swallowing as many timepieces as possible to stop the passage of time leading to the extinction of his species.  It’s painted in the style of 19th century naturalist James Audubon to reflect possible  future public interest in what may once again become a rare curiosity."

 

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