Born only to burn
Ian Stone's meticulously rendered still life and figurative paintings explore queer memory and camp through carefully arranged collections of ornamental and personal objects, with the body positioned as a site through which identity is formed, expressed, and remembered. Informed by traditions of 19th-century Realism and Western art history, his oil paintings and drawings are rich in detail and cultural awareness, reflecting how femininity, longing, and performance shape contemporary queer life. Paintings are unframed, while works on paper are framed under glass.
Artist's description:
Fire rises from what has been placed on the table. It moves with certainty, following a pattern already set. For some lives, burning was never metaphorical. It was anticipated, normalized, written into law, faith, and language long before the body arrived. To be born was already to be exposed. This work refuses drama. It stays with the fact: destruction was expected, rehearsed, inherited. And yet, burning does not complete the story it intends to end. What was meant to disappear leaves trace. Heat reshapes. Ash remains. Even when a life is treated as fuel, it does not vanish without consequence.
-Ian Stone, 2025
