Featured work by artist Mark Stebbins. Based in London, Ontario, Mark Stebbins creates acrylic paintings that explore the connections between digital imaging, craft histories, artistic labor, and memory. Using a combination of brushstroke and pen drawing techniques, Stebbins applies tiny smears of acrylic paint to layers of surface to create illusions of textiles, brushstrokes, and pixelation. He is inspired by various visual histories of painting and textile traditions (particularly those specific to the American Southwest, where he hails from), as well as contemporary digital imaging and AI-rendered images.
“I think of my painting process as a form of conceptual layering, where I combine and rearrange various references in an attempt to find intersections between various histories of art and craft. I am interested in art as a form of labour as storytelling, and I want my work to be seen as a humanised rather than a mechanical product. I am intrigued by works that feel strange and slightly unstable, and I often pursue fusions of forms that resist easy interpretation and challenge first impressions.”
Check out more pictures below!
