About
Monica Stewart is a multimedia artist working primarily with paper. She received her BFA with an emphasis painting from Murray State University and her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Louisville.
Artist Statement
I am drawn to media like paper, fabric, and wood, which can be easily transformed through alteration. While my work is deeply rooted in drawing, processes like sewing and papercutting allow me to expand my ideas across materials and concepts. I contrast potentially abject imagery with bright saturated colors to allude the fantastical and grotesque while constructing works that border on the illustrative. By cutting, rearranging, and embellishing, I create allusions to both the playful and the perverse.
My past work has focused on folklore, fairy tales, and craft practices as means to explore identity, societal expectations, and violence against women. Meanwhile, my recent work explores the human connection to the natural world as well as to each other, especially within the context the changes to our planet caused by climate change. Still influenced by research and narrative, I explore both pictorial and scientific connections, like symbiotic relationships. As our planet changes, perhaps irrevocably, what connections might we lose? What connections might we gain? Grieving the damage done to the environment and imagining a kind of adaptive symbiosis of my own, my new work is made of candy-colored constructs, inviting viewers to examine our understanding of and connection to a ‘natural’ world.
© Monica Stewart 2023
Images may not be used without prior written permission