Stuart Cain
Born and raised in Buckinghamshire, Stuart Cain now lives and works in Cambridge. After finishing his degree Stuart moved to London where he became fascinated by the variety of social environments that form people and individual stories that link them to their past. Some of these stories have been told before, many times, in classic poems and novels which are part of our cultural inheritance.
Stuart composes interaction between the reader and narrative in his captivating brush and ink paintings. Stuart carefully paints on to Vintage book pages and so any space between the figures exposes a background of the words from the book which gives the subject context and revitalises the character. Books only come alive when they are read.
The subjects in Stuart’s work are often turned away from the observer, seemingly engaged in the narrative, which remains magically elusive.
The work captures a feeling that the figure is connected to the narrative of the pages and influences how the story is told. This interaction between text and figure illustrates an interpretation of the story into our current times but highlights that despite changes in our cultural and social situations some universal desires and feelings remain fundamentally the same.