EUAN STEWART 'A Sense of Self'

About

Shifting forms, a pattern of displacements, unsettling blurrings and overlappings, 'A Sense of Self' is an emotional response to a crisis of collective and individual identity. Faceless and featureless, these abstracted figures move to an industrial rhythm of line and colour and negative space that swings them from separation to communion, and back again. Questioning who we are, who are the people around us and the impact of this web of interconnections, normally the fundamentals of existential enquiry, have unexpectedly turned into the matter of everyday life.

But the anonymity's deceptive. With the fabric of individuality picked away through experiments in form and composition, what emerges is a picture of the human essence which, however creepy it sometimes appears, in that very moment opens a space for us to project our own sense of self. Here (as it happens, unsexed) is King Lear's 'unaccommodated man', the bare forked animal. It's us.    
Throughout there's a repeated unanswered and maybe unanswerable question... but using art rather than science and a linocutting blade rather than a scalpel to cut the disease called life from the body. Stewart re-examines his subject each time knowing something is always out of reach, Doctor Tulp dissecting rather than Pygmalion breathing life. No re-animation, but testament to loss.

Euan specialises in drawing and printmaking. His ongoing studies in anatomy, identity and natural history play with medium, scale and sequence to produce results that can be traditional or experimental in execution.

A graduate of Edinburgh Collegeof Art and the University of Brighton, he has exhibited widely, from the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition to the Awagami Print Exhibition in Japan. His work is held in collections at the V&A, Fabriano Museum and the Wellcome Collection.

Euan is the 11th winner of our annual 'LOTTERY SHOW' for more information go to our website.