In an unassuming, yet lovely, antiques shop better known for its extraordinary furniture, hangs the artwork of a remarkable artist. Brian Stewart is that rare breed of painter who not only paints like masters of the past, but dows so with humility and awe.
“I am not on the cutting edge of art, and I don’t want to be,” says Stewart. “My art is simply about honoring the natural world and the taken-for-granted beauties that surround us.”
Stewart’s approach, known as plein-air painting, is the centuries-old tradition of taking the easel outside and confronting nature directly. “When painting ‘en plein-air,’ you are dealing with the elements, with the wonders of nature, changing light, weather conditions, bugs, you name it,” says Stewart. “It’s a spiritual adventure and has as much in common with gardening, hiking or bird-watching as id does with art. To the artist, the process is as important as the product.”
For his patrons, it sit eh product that is gratefully and sometimes whimsically admired. Whether your eyes gaze upon a painting of a croquet mallet left forgotten on the grass or a majestic scene of Big Sur, you are somehow reminded of a time and place that calls out to you. Stewart’s work is the kind that brings both comfort and joy and reminds us to look beyond the obvious.
“I’m attracted to city scenes, architecture, rustic interiors and activities from everyday life,” says Stewart. “To me, there can be as much beauty in a back alley as a woman in a flowing white dress. I think it is the artist’s role and responsibility to point that beauty out.”
Raised in Pasadena, Stewart was exposed to the work of the Eucalyptus School and the Arts and Crafts aesthetic. He spent 25 years in the advertising business, as a graphic designer, art director and television producer before owning his own agency in Minneapolis. “This journey did a lot to clarify my values,” says Stewart. “I then returned to my childhood love: painting.”
His work has been commissioned by private- and public-institutions throughout the Midwest and California, and he has been an instructor of graphic design and drawing in Minneapolis and Pasadena. Stewart has held workshops on plein-air and studio painting around the county. His own studies were conducted in Los Angeles, both at the Art Center College of Design and the Chouinard Art Institute. In Minneapolis, he studied at the Atelier Lack and the Atelier LeSueur, and completed a year-long independent museum-study program throughout Europe.
As with all plein-air painters, Stewart paints, not in the comfort of an air-conditioned studio, but outdoors, wherever the may be. He has captured everything from the mighty roar of the Mississippi River to the quiet strength of the fields of Monterey. No one could argue that artists are compelled by their art, but some artists find purpose in the act of creating.
“I feel I am an ambassador for art,” says Stewart. “You’ll always make friends with a painting easel outdoors. People are immediately drawn to it.”
Brian Stewart’s art is shown at Sekula’s Fine Antiques, 855 57th Street, Sacramento, which specializes in vintage and contemporary plein-air art and fine atntiques, particularly period lighting and items that would be have been found in a California home from approximately the 1860s to the 1930s.
