Michael Stewart James

My work explores areas of conflict through a variety of content and visual languages, exploring themes of symbolism, signs and the everyday commercial expansion of visual imagery; highlighting the tendency for the absurd, the detachment of meaning, and the contradictory nature of these visual codes which begin to fold in on themselves. I concentrate on the play of appearances and the blurring of boundaries between various visual languages, through the perception of colour, objects, forms and established histories of painting. At present, I am synthesizing abstraction and figuration and compounding anachronistic languages of painting, particularly with a purpose of emphasizing and amplifying qualities that seduce and intensify the visual senses. I employ visual formats such as photorealism, geometric form and highly saturated values of colour, using various processes, including photography, digital manipulation, oil and various painting techniques and media.

Central Saint Martins, London, GB, MA Fine Art,