Mary Stewart
Mary Stewart
BIOGRAPHY: Professor Emeritus Mary Stewart taught in the Department of Art at Florida State University from 2006 to 2017. Her work has been shown in over 90 exhibitions nationally and internationally. She received a Southeastern College Art Association Excellence in Teaching Award in 2010, the Foundations in Art: Theory and Education Master Educator award in 2009 and the National Council of Arts Administrators Award of Distinction in 2008.
She is also the author of Launching the Imagination: A Comprehensive Guide to Basic Design, a best-selling design textbook. Professor Stewart is in Fredericton until December, offering various presentations and interviewing exemplars of creativity in any discipline for her new book.
ARTIST STATEMENT: What forces drive change—in nature and in ourselves? What is the rate of change, and how might it vary from person to person or from site to site? How does change in one person or object trigger change in another?
When working representationally, I am interested in possibilities that exist below the surface or in an earlier time. For example, in my Surface Tension series, photographs from north Florida’s blackwater rivers provide both reflective surfaces and and evocative (even threatening) undercurrent. When the work is more abstract, visual layers are built up and then broken apart, as the net of certainty is ripped by the complexities of change. Close-ups are often superimposed on a base layer of recurrent patterns to suggest both the general movement of water and the specific twigs or flowers we observe in greater detail when we walk along the river bank. Taking it further, how do we construct and express knowledge, both of ourselves and of the world around us? What do we see and what do we understand? What do maps tell us that direct observation cannot?
I am most interested in how we construct and express knowledge, both of ourselves and of the world around us. By digitally reconstructing photographic imagery to create new visual structures, I invite viewers to reflect on their existing knowledge and seek new understanding.
