December 2007
I will be exhibiting in a few Christmas shows this year;
Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray from 8 Dec until 26 Jan
Hazel Williams Gallery, Kilkenny from 7 Dec
Castlecomer Estate Yard, Co Kilkenny. dates to be confirmed

August 2007
For the Arts festival in Kilkenny this year, I will be showing work at the Design Centre retaurant from August 1 for 3 weeks and at the Castlecomer Estate Yard from the 10 to 19 August.

July 2007
3 of my pieces are in Art Dublin'07 in BT2 from 16 to 30 June.

June 2007
My work on the film is finished so now it's back to painting again. Wahoo!

August 2006
The Blackbird Gallery is currently showing some of my latest work as part of their Arts Festival exhibition.

June 2006
The Battletown Gallery opens in Newtownards and some of my new paintings are on exhibition.

January 2006
'Line, Colour and Earth' - an exhibition of new paintings opens in the Courthouse Arts Centre, Co. Wicklow on January 15. The exhibition runs until February 10.

October 2005
Production on 'Brendan and the Secret of Kells' starts and I, as Art Director, will be helping to design the locations, settings, style and colour of the film over the next year.

September 2005
'THESE ARE FOR PEOPLE' opens in the County Hall, Kilkenny on Friday 30th. The exhibition of 15 Pieces with poetry by Eoghan O'Drisceoil runs until 11th November.

August 2005
Seomra 5 opens in the Castle yard, Kilkenny for the Kilkenny Arts Festival. I am exhibiting 15 paintings in the exhibition.

June 2005
Man of the House/ Woman of the House is selected for the Eigse open submission exhibition in Carlow.

April 2005
Exhibition of paintings 'Return to Archaic Form' opens in the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Foster Place, Dublin. The exhibition consists of 21 new pieces concerning our connection with our culture and environment. The exhibition runs from April 5 to 23, Tuesday to Saturday.

January 2005
I am currently painting in the WASPS studios in Glasgow preparing for a future exhibition in Dublin. I will be painting there until June 2005.

October 2004
The film 'Brendan and the Secret of Kells is due to start production next summer and Cartoon Saloon, Kilkenny have secured me to work as Art Director on it. I am currently preparing concept scene illustrations and layout designs and working with Director Tomm Moore on setting the design and style of the film.

 

Forthcoming exhibtions

Kilkenny Design Centre, August 2007

Castlecomer Estate Yard, August 2007

Current exhibitions

Battletown Gallery, Newtownards

The Blackbird Gallery, Kieran St., Kilkenny

Art Exposure, Parnie St., Glasgow

Previous solo exhibitions

Courthouse Arts Centre, Tinahely, Co. Wicklow
Feb, 2006

'These are for people!',
Kilkenny County hall. Sept 2005

Stormont Gallery, Belfast. June 2005

'Return to Archaic Form',
Bank of Ireland Arts Centre. April 2005

'Constuction Continued'
Excel Gallery, Tipperary. October 2004

'Construction on the Horizon'
Kilkenny Castle, Kilkenny. August 2004

'Footsteps'
Rothe House, Kilkenny. August 2002

New Paintings
Frameworks Gallery, Kilkenny. August 2000

Previous Group Exhibitions

Lavit Gallery, Cork. Dec 2005

Group exhibition
Kilkenny Art Gallery, Kilkenny

'Seomra 5'
Castle Yard, Kilkenny. Aug 2005

'Eigse', Carlow. June, 2005

'Group exhibition'
Wicklow County Buildings. Oct 2004

'Living Arts Festival'
Bateman Quay, Kilkenny. Dec 2003

'Unseen Voices'
Tig Fili, Cork. Oct 2003

'Seomra4'
Upstairs Gallery, 93, High st., Kilkenny. August 2003

'Five Years On'
County Hall, Kilkenny. Sept 2002

'Seomra4'
Vicar st., Kilkenny. August 2002

Group exhibition
Upstairs Gallery, 93, High st., Kilkenny. August 1999

 

Ross Stewart is a Kilkenny based artist who has exhibited widely since graduating from art college in 1999, where he studied classical animation and background painting. His paintings have explored various themes such as chaos and order, modern mans' impact on our environment, energy in movement and form and more recently, our relationship with our heritage and culture on a personal and perhaps subconcious level. His work is semi abstact, with close compositions splitting the canvas or using panels and cropped frames to isolate simpler compositions from larger ones. He employs a wide range of materials and mediums in his continued studies in texture, ranging from acrylics with charcoal, oils with stitching to painted plaster and wire through canvas or cotton rag paper. These organic and traditionally made pieces contrast remarkably with his other work in illustration and background design for animation.

 

I paint with oils and acrylics and use a variety of materials through these such as charcoal, sand, plaster and hair to provide various textures. I employ these through energetic, frantic lines, dots and marks tied with solid, smooth pools of deep natural colours to create a sense of chaos versus calm. My work is predominantly a study of textures with colour and composition. It is a reaction against the print, computer and television media with which much of my career to date has dealt with. I enjoy the surfaces and richness of texture and detail only available through the realness of traditional media that are lost in modern technological reproductions. The inspiration for my work stems directly from the rich culture and heritage of Ireland. I am fascinated by the lands history and that of it’s people and my work has focussed on various aspects of Irish society, history and environment. Series of studies of old castles and forts through to monoliths and standing stones have emerged in some of my recent work as I examine their relevance and importance in a prevailing modern European society of motorways and skyscrapers. However, despite my work having such meanings present in them, my main aim is to present them as works of colour, texture and composition worthy of review for that reason alone. My work over the next year will continue on these themes, possibly introducing some mixed media, sketches, photographs and found objects into the painting. I hope to extend the use of the limited palette in my painting to include more metallic colours and possibly use oxidised and tarnished metal itself. I plan to carry on with studies of ruins and forts along the west coast and explore the forgotten memories and echoes of the past harboured in their crumbling walls. My next work will be carried out on unusual canvas shapes and panel series investigating the effect of size, shape and segments on each painting.

Return to Archaic form, Ross Stewart, 2005
"There can be an invigorating and slightly unnerving feeling when standing at the entrance to a passage grave, under a dolmen in isolation or facing the roughly hewn scrawls and carvings on an ogham stone atop a barren hill. We feel that we are in the presence of so much more than a pile of rocks. Or when viewing the ancient tools of a long dead race, one can hardly imagine how much importance they had to their makers or users. The decorative symbols adorning these rocks, metal or clay items surely attest to this.When we fail to understand the meanings and messages in the simple lines and shapes carved by some primitive hand, do we feel the distance between our technologically advanced society and theirs, all the more? In these paintings, I try to illustrate how some ancient being, whose life and survival was inextricabely linked to his world around him, might have viewed them. To achieve this I employ a variety of techniques; simple shapes, decoration and perspective, limited palettes, loose glazes over heavily textured backgrounds of natural colours, with compositions that focus attention, some more abstract than others: imbuing them with life, power and inner luminance. How a primitive mind might have seen such power or majesty in a tree, a hilltop, a monolith, the moon, the sun, fascinates me; things that we have explained and rationalised to death and now take for granted. And so, in this body of work, I aim to return some of that forgotten meaning to those basic icons of life that should still to this day, amaze us."