Stewart was born in Watford, Hertfordshire in 1954. “I think I was born with a pencil in my hand. At school I was always drawing. Always top in art, I won school prizes for my drawings - I even won a national drawing competition aged 11.” Hestudied at Twickenham (now Richmond) College under the tutelage of the maverick painter Stan Smith who became Head of Fine Art at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art.
Stewart pursued a successful career as a freelance Illustrator and Graphic Designer, eventually establishing his own Design Consultancy. In the early nineties he took the decision to give (almost) all of it up and move the family to deepest, rural France. Stewart soon established a reputation there, staging successful exhibitions and teaching numerous classes. He went on to write and illustrate two award winning children’s books, The Lucky Sovereignand Runanway Jack, each published in both the UK and the US.
Stewart brings a wealth of experience as an illustrator and painter of figures, portraits and landscapes to the genre of Still Life. The Dutch Stilleven artists of the 17th century have been a huge influence but Stewart has also taken a great deal of pleasure and inspiration from studying the works of Andrew Wyeth, whose interiors, landscapes, figures and still life paintings captured light, texture and, above all, mood and atmosphere, almost entirely through the most obsessive and meticulous draughtsmanship.
“Your painting looks just like a photograph! It’s so often said to me. It is said as a compliment and I take it as such. It means I’ve achieved at least part of my aim. I do want to capture the appearance of my subjects. I do want a clarity and a precision to my work. Like a portrait painter I’m striving with every painting to capture the essence and beauty of my model, be that model a humble clove of garlic or a cracked and weathered clay pot. I am concerned with detail and surface but I’m also trying to say something deeper about my subjects. Something the monocular eye of a camera could never express.”
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Stewart pursued a successful career as a freelance Illustrator and Graphic Designer, eventually establishing his own Design Consultancy. In the early nineties he took the decision to give (almost) all of it up and move the family to deepest, rural France. Stewart soon established a reputation there, staging successful exhibitions and teaching numerous classes. He went on to write and illustrate two award winning children’s books, The Lucky Sovereignand Runanway Jack, each published in both the UK and the US.
Stewart brings a wealth of experience as an illustrator and painter of figures, portraits and landscapes to the genre of Still Life. The Dutch Stilleven artists of the 17th century have been a huge influence but Stewart has also taken a great deal of pleasure and inspiration from studying the works of Andrew Wyeth, whose interiors, landscapes, figures and still life paintings captured light, texture and, above all, mood and atmosphere, almost entirely through the most obsessive and meticulous draughtsmanship.
