Artist Spotlight: Ryen Slaughter
- thepaper6
- Dec 20, 2025
- 3 min read
By Zury Cordova
Ryen Slaughter is a junior at City College majoring in English. She discovered her love for drawing as a way to relax and express herself, turning simple tools like pencil and paper into imaginative worlds. Ryen hopes to pursue a career as an art teacher or children’s book illustrator, bringing her characters to life both visually and through words.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
What inspired you to start drawing?
It was a way for me to express myself and to others around me. Growing up, I enjoyed art class a lot which opened my eyes to different art media like: painting, collage, watercolor, sculpture, and so much more. Drawing was just always my favorite. It was just more simple for me, using a paper and any pencil or marker to draw. It was a way for me to relax and destress all my problems away but by also creating characters in my head making it fun to imagine them all on paper.
Are you currently inspired by any particular artist, artistic movements, or even things outside of art?
Some artists that I’m inspired by are Pablo Picasso, Peter Saul, and Bobbie Goods. Not only did I grow up with Picasso’s popular painting, Three Musicians 1921, being in my living room; after my mom found it outside on the sidewalks of Broadway. Not quite sure if it’s the original but I can remember looking up at that painting for hours as a little girl. Wondering what exactly I was looking at. I was fascinated by how everything was so abstract and almost compressed together forming one. The colors were vibrant and alluring with the brown background. Peter Saul is an abstract artist/painter that was inspired by 1940’s comic books such as: Crime Does Not Play and Plastic Man. He was also inspired by the iconic Mad Magazine. Both Picasso and Saul have a unique way of using abstraction in their own way, as well as using color and the way of freedom to create it. Showing how art should be shown as being fun and expressing yourself without judgement behind it. Bobbie Goods, who’s an artist I found on Instagram, also inspired my art style, based on her comforting yet cute animals that she made color books based off of. They're seen as adorable and just make you smile when you look at them, which is how I want my own art to be portrayed.
What are your future career plans or artistic plans?
My future career plans are to possibly become an art teacher/professor or a children's book illustrator. I went to LaGuardia Community College for 2 years and graduated with my associate degree in Fine Arts: Design Studies. I then transferred to City College to pursue English because one thing I also enjoyed growing up was writing, especially when it came to short stories. It was a way for my characters to come to life by talking to one another.
How do you describe your artistic style? How would you say your drawing style or technique evolved over time?
I would describe my art style to be very childlike and playful in a way. I came up with a bear character named Chubs based on a birthmark I have on my right leg that I always said looked like a bear chub growing up. I also came up with an elephant character named Eugene based on my love for elephants being that they are my favorite animal. I knew I wanted my style to be simple and yet sweet in a way, so I started playing around by doodling different shapes until one stuck to me. In the beginning of my drawing technique I used to just simply rely on my sketchbook to draw, but back in 2024 I purchased my very first iPad, which I now use to draw everything I create using the app Procreate.
Can you describe your creative process from idea to finished piece?
For this specific piece I wanted to make my characters Chubs and Eugene into a keychain. While also adding some shading in their bodies to really make them pop out to my audience more.
Zury Cordova is a sophomore at The City College of New York, pursuing a bachelor's degree in communications and a minor in creative writing. She is passionate about creative expression and spends her free time journaling, writing, and painting.
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