Xenotopia Print

Stuart Jones has been working as an artist for over twenty years. He is a British artist originally from the North West of England but is now living and working out of a studio in Hertfordshire, near to London. He studied Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University. He is interested in the environment and the way we view and experience it. He is a painter working mainly in oil paint and mixed media on canvas. His work is informed by the urban and rural landscape and ideas of utopia, dystopia and the sublime. He is currently a fellow at Digswell arts and was shortlisted for the Beep Painting Prize (2022) and John Moores Painting Prize (2020) and was awarded the Contemporary Arts Trust Prize (2019). He has artwork in private collections in the UK, USA and Berlin and has exhibited nationally and internationally, recent exhibitions include: 2023 ‘A Fractured Glimpse’ Joint show, Digswell Arts, Letchworth Garden City 2023 ‘New Wave’, Spitalfields Studio, London, E1 5NF 2022 ‘New Paintings’ Solo show, Digswell Arts Gallery, Letchworth Garden City 2022 The Beep Painting Prize, Elysium Gallery, Swansea. 2022 The Other Art Fair, The Old Truman Brewery, London. 2021 ‘Push and the Land’ Pineapple Black Project Space, Middlesbrough 2021 ‘Looks like it’s gunna rain’ Unit 15, Petty Cury, Cambridge 2021 ‘A Voyage of Absurdity’ The Forge, Craft Central, London, E14 3AE 'The environment and how we experience the landscape interests me and informs my practice. My work explores the human relationship with the landscape and how this is in flux. As we become increasingly disconnected from our environment due to technological advancement, we are in conflict with the natural world due to the way we live. Ideas of utopia, dystopia, heterotopia and the sublime are consistent themes within my practice. The Anthropocene and the climate crisis and current social and political issues feed my thinking. My paintings consists of layers of oil paint glazes, staining and pouring, spray paint applied with stencils and paint pens on canvas. My process varies and evolves over time but generally starts with drawings, images, and collages that I have manipulated and experimented with: this then forms the starting point for the painting. The human figure is missing from my paintings, enabling the viewer to become the missing human presence within the work, the spaces becoming portals that the viewer has to negotiate into an alternative world, space or time.'