I feel as if I’ve chosen painting as a means to working out life, inadvertently choosing the medium that has the least chance of succeeding but at the same time has the best qualities for making the most of the failures. The paintings are the dirt piles on the side of a doomed excavation….but… ‘There is nothing as beautiful as that which doesn’t exist’…Paul Valery
When I know what I’m doing, I’ll stop painting…
Hitchhiking Series
My current works have their beginning in memories of when I hitch-hiked around the USA when I was 21 years old. The default of memory gives me permission to challenge how I am painting as I try and stretch across, ‘a gulf, too wide for even a spirit to pass’. I loosely call the group of work, ‘Head Highway’ and usually title them with the name of a state that I passed through so each painting manages to keep its own story. I often think of them as lost photo opportunities… This is the logical beginning to each painting. Crucially, and for me unavoidably, bit-by-bit as I work, the logic ebbs away. I hope to get to the point when logic leaves the studio, so that painting can take over. These paintings are dedicated to T.J, Chip, Bill, Robert, Gary, John, Crazy Michael, Larry, Jack; assorted Vietnam Vets, ex-bomber crews and broken people sitting and drinking (brown bagging) on the steps of Kansas City YMCA, Summer 1978.
‘TreeAirplaneTrap’ Paintings: I used to sit in my flat at the Elephant and Castle watching the planes on their flightpath into Heathrow at night. They seemingly flew through the trees out front. I imagined them being trapped in the branches. The egalitarianism of the availability of being able to fly, particularly low cost airlines (the paintings early working title was ‘Easys’) was another branch of modernism (see ‘Apollo’ below). Imagining them getting trapped seems to make sense to me now. In a further twist, the pollution from this mass flying is now a major contributor to climate change.
“Bill Stewart’s ‘TreeAirplaneTrap’ disappoints at first: an aeroplane caught in a budding shrub could be a cliché, the clunky entanglement of machine and nature. More importantly it’s an illusion created by scale and angle of vision. The Artist’s capacity to create something that looks real but isn’t, has ramifications for everyone involved in image creation….Conceptual works such as ‘TreeAirplaneTrap’ engage the intellect because they deal with Arts’ big issues, such as perception, communication and ambiguity.” Sandra Gibson, Nerve magazine review of John Moores painting prize 2018
‘Apollo’ Paintings (‘Eagles’): The moonlandings were probably the greatest and last act of modernism.
‘Nelson’ paintings (‘H’): I was walking home across Trafalgar Square after a night out and looked up at the back of his statue, lit by electricity, disappearing into the dark. It had the feel of end of empire about it…
Vibrations The disorientating effect of darkness, the disassociation, the release from concrete and artificial light, the lurking unpredictability, unfamiliar and other-worldliness, its’ aurality (you can hear the still air -or is it the blood rushing behind your eardrums?), the sparkling hanging in that air testing the retina in the decreasing light, and jabs like the flickers in the eyes of the Apollo XI Astronauts, represented amongst the theoretically devoid pointillism that sometimes pops up in my paintings that are the Vibrations. The chaotic patina reflecting the racing of the mind/senses. Everything vibrates. The Earth hums. Heat, cold, thunderstorms, wind, tinnitus-inducing silence. Occasional brittle paranoia. The bones under your skin and the bones under your feet. I like the night because although you know things are there, you are never quite sure where they are. I like the night because although you can hear sounds, you’re never quite sure what’s making them. A mouse rustling the leaves can sound like someone or something coming to take your life…all of these things become part of the Vibrations. It’s easier to feel these at night. And if the stars turn, if the clouds allow it… and if the Moon comes… …and then there are the thoughts. They also contribute to the vibrations. The ‘quiet’ is where the mind whirls. All those thoughts, demons from the past, reflections on the meaning(lessness?) of life, the stars making you realise your insignificance or, conversely, the significance of the miracle of your existence. Sleeping ‘wild’ -what I call ‘Wildman’- clears out the brain, de-clutters, eludes the everyday and makes you alive in a totally different way. The land/nightscape paintings try to grasp at all this. Therefore Night and Memory lead me to the crux of my painting: the battle involved in accepting that everything is beyond me.
When hitchhiking I often slept out. I have carried this on throughout my life and still find a wood, heath or, now I am on the Devon/Cornwall border, a clifftop to lay out the sleeping bag. Consequently many of my paintings are night-time paintings were born in the night. In the night everything becomes fragmented and tries to re-arrange itself. Memory can have the same effect, whereby absolute truth doesn’t exist.