Beth Stuart

Beth Stuart (any pronouns) works in an expanding range of media including writing, painting, ceramic, performance, textiles, and sculptural installation. Their work is mostly about battling binaries. They see this as an ethic of hope and a way of showing up for the world they want to live in. This comes through in continuous material play and a careful critique of modernist aesthetics, colonial relations and anarchist philosophy. The motifs that come up most: clothes, architecture, patterns, wonky figure-ground relationships, ritual, food and plant histories, zombie Victorianism, Quakers, swimming, mud, and a free Palestine. 

They have had many shows of many scales in many places that are both fancy and not-so-fancy, and gotten various accolades. They are looking forward to the time when these accolades become obsolete and art becomes itself again; part of what makes us human, an absolute entitlement for every person, and inherently good.  

Stuart has been a post-secondary teacher for over 15 years. Their teaching portfolio includes traditional and non-traditional approaches to painting, the juncture of two and three-dimensional construction, intersectional feminist practice, writing and visual theory. Their approach to teaching is characterized by flexibility - to materials, learning styles, politics, sensibilities, and cultural difference. They view the classroom as a collaborative space in which curiosity on everyone’s part is the major driver of learning.