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.\u00a0 Maybe, ‘There is nothing as beautiful as that which doesn’t exist’…Paul Valery<\/p>\n
When I know what I’m doing, I’ll stop painting…<\/p>\n
Hitchhiking Series<\/strong><\/p>\n My current works have their beginning in memories of when I hitch-hiked around the USA when I was 21 and 24 years old.\u00a0 The default of memory gives me permission to challenge how I am painting as I try to stretch across, \u2018a gulf, too wide for even a spirit to pass\u2019.\u00a0 I loosely call the group of work, \u2018Head Highway\u2019 and often title them with the name of a state that I passed through so each painting manages to keep its own story.\u00a0 I sometimes think of them as lost photo opportunities\u2026or postcards across time (the way I paint the state names seems to have a garish postcard quality).\u00a0 This is the logical beginning to each painting.\u00a0 Crucially, and for me unavoidably, bit-by-bit as I work, the logic ebbs away.\u00a0 I hope to get to the point when logic leaves the studio, so that painting can take over.\u00a0 A mentor once told Duke Ellington, \u2018when you find the logical way, ignore it\u2019.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Many of my paintings are paintings of night-time.\u00a0 I like to sleep out (no tent) when I can, something I started through necessity when I hitch-hiked (see ‘Vibrations<\/strong>‘ below).\u00a0 I paint night-time with the dark removed<\/strong>.<\/em>..<\/p>\n ‘TreeAirplaneTrap’ Paintings:\u00a0 <\/strong>I used to sit in my flat at the Elephant and Castle watching the planes on their flightpath into Heathrow at night.\u00a0 They seemingly flew through the trees out front.\u00a0 I imagined them being trapped in the branches.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 Imagining them getting trapped seems to make sense to me now.\u00a0 In a further twist, the pollution from this mass flying is now a major contributor to climate change.<\/p>\n “Bill Stewart\u2019s \u2018TreeAirplaneTrap\u2019 disappoints at first: an aeroplane caught in a budding shrub could be a clich\u00e9, the clunky entanglement of machine and nature.\u00a0 More importantly it\u2019s an illusion created by scale and angle of vision.\u00a0 The Artist\u2019s capacity to create something that looks real but isn\u2019t, has ramifications for everyone involved in image creation\u2026.Conceptual works such as \u2018TreeAirplaneTrap\u2019 engage the intellect because they deal with Arts\u2019 big issues, such as perception, communication and ambiguity.\u201d <\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>Sandra Gibson, Nerve magazine review of John Moores painting prize 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n ‘Apollo’ Paintings\u00a0 (‘Eagles’): <\/b>The moonlandings were probably the greatest and last act of modernism.<\/p>\n ‘Nelson’ paintings (‘H’): <\/strong>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.\u00a0 It had the feel of end of empire about it…<\/p>\n Vibrations\u00a0<\/strong> The disorientating effect of darkness, the disassociation, the release from concrete and artificial light, the lurking unpredictability, unfamiliar and other-worldliness, its\u2019 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<\/strong>. The chaotic patina reflecting the racing of the mind\/senses. Everything vibrates. The Earth hums.\u00a0 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\u2019re never quite sure what\u2019s making them. A mouse rustling the leaves can sound like someone or something coming to take your life\u2026all of these things become part of the Vibrations. It\u2019s easier to feel these at night. And if the stars turn, if the clouds allow it\u2026 and if the Moon comes\u2026 \u2026and then there are the thoughts.\u00a0 They also contribute to the vibrations.\u00a0 The \u2018quiet\u2019 is where the mind whirls.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Sleeping \u2018wild\u2019 -what I call \u2018Wildman\u2019- clears out the brain, de-clutters, eludes the everyday and makes you alive in a totally different way.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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, born in the night. In the night everything becomes fragmented and tries to re-arrange itself.\u00a0 A bit like painting.\u00a0 At night certainty doesn\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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.\u00a0 Maybe, ‘There is nothing as beautiful as that which doesn’t exist’…Paul Valery When I … <\/p>\n