Bill Stewart

Ceramic Sculpture
www.stewartsculpture.com

“Inventive”, “humorous”, “mysterious”, “funky” and “fanciful” are a few of the many colorful adjectives used to describe Stewart’s work. As critics have long noted, his totemic (usually black and white) figures, brilliantly realized in the commission for the Greater Rochester International Airport recall archaeological and mythological associations with primitive cultures. At same time, these moody works reflect contemporary trends in art, as well as current social/cultural interests in body decoration, whether piercing, tattooing or scarification.   If these “primitive” works (or “creatures) as one critic noted) seem to emerge from a darkened cavern within the artist’s imagination, other images cartoon-like landscape.   Brilliant color, expressive forms and whimsical characters that would feel at home in the circuses and “fun-zones” of our youth, or with The Beatles in The Yellow Submarine, characterize this playful work.

Stewart’s sculpture draws from both popular and primitive cultures.   They also reflect the artist’s immersion in some of the most interesting, if lesser known, art historical movements of the twentieth-century. The brilliant palettes and expressive, distorted forms of Karel Appel and the CoBrA group come to mind.   And, certainly, they share a common interest in folk art, children’s art and primitive art. Closer to home, is the so-called Bay Area  “Funk Art” movement of the 1960s—humorous, pop-oriented and irreverent in spirit.
 

Grant Holcomb, Director

Memorial Art Gallery/University of Rochester

Artist Statement

Body decoration and costuming relative to popular and primal cultures provide the foundation for my recent work. The visual, psychological and physiological effect upon the decorated individual and the viewer is of equal significance,  Assimilated information integrated with a working approach based on intuition and a spontaneous response to the magic of the imagination produces images that have an eccentric energy.  The resulting object may be off center, humorous, weird or absurd.

Bill Stewart