by Mike Stuart
Created as a direct emotional reaction to the current age of anxiety over the last two years, this series of monochromatic painted biro drawings tries to find sense in an unpredictable, precarious world. A stream of consciousness feed, aspiring to explore higher states, but invaded by intrusive thoughts of industrial genocide, growing fascism, rampant consumerism, unaccountable oligarchy, media overload and social isolation, while the world careers blindly towards climate breakdown…
Figures scratched in jagged black outlines dug furiously into the paper, jostle with ink-washed shadows in broken urban landscapes. Sharp-edged, gritty, and distorted, but also lyrical, dreamlike, and darkly humorous; the pictures are striving to evolve the ideal form to encompass everything we feel in these dark ages.
Mike Stuart studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths in the 80s, alongside some of the Brit Art movement artists. He exhibits regularly in Bristol. His work is influenced by baroque and renaissance painting, comic art, street art, the attitude of punk… and cats.