Dec 6, 2024 - Jan 7, 2025
Opening Reception: Friday Dec 6, 2024 5-7 pm
“I’ve begun to explore AI as a tool to inspire and extend my creative vision.
Each piece, while deeply rooted in natural forms, exists in a space between reality and the imagined, offering a reflection of both the physical world and the digital one.”
A short documentary featuring local Kingston artist Lee Stewart. Lee’s work defies predictability, reflecting his unique perspective as an Indigenous mixed-race artist.
artist statement: Art official Lee
In my work as a landscape painter, I’ve always been fascinated by the interaction between nature and perception—how the world around us is interpreted through both the physical and the imagined. However, for this series, I’ve taken a step in a different direction, embracing a new process that blends natural perception with the digital interpretation.
Recently, I’ve begun to explore AI as a tool to inspire and extend my creative vision. Rather than painting from direct observation or memory, I have been describing my visions of landscapes to AI, allowing it to translate my words into visual form. These AI-generated images, with their strange and unpredictable interpretations, serve as the foundation for my paintings. Each piece, while deeply rooted in natural forms, exists in a space between reality and the imagined, offering a reflection of both the physical world and the digital one.
What fascinates me about this process is how I relinquish some control to the AI, which introduces a level of unpredictability and abstraction. It interprets my descriptions in ways I might never have imagined on my own, pushing me to engage with landscapes in new, unexpected forms. Through this evolving process, I hope to explore the broader implications of technology in art, nature and perception.
biography:
Lee Stewart (b. 1985) grew up in Kashechewan, a fly-in community in Northern Ontario. In 2004, he attended Carleton University, in Ottawa, for Film and Art History. He currently lives and works in Kingston, Ontario.
As a self-taught artist, his work explores the mind of a culture vulture. Using a palette influenced by the vibrant hues of Canada’s seasons, the saturated images of the internet, and the Old Masters, Lee strives to bridge the traditional and contemporary to create a new liminal space. Through the curious mix of intuitive exploration, source materials and its subsequent reimagining, his art reflects a celebration of diverse narratives.
Ghost imaging (also called "coincidence imaging", "two-photon imaging" or "correlated-photon imaging") is a technique that produces an image of an object by combining information from two light detectors: a multi-pixel detector and a single pixel detector.
- from Wikipedia
THE ARTWORK
