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:
A muscular arm reaches from behind a curtain, gripping its edge. The body signals strength—defined muscle, visible veins—yet the gesture is tentative, withholding as much as it reveals. What appears is carefully chosen. In contemporary gay culture, labels like top, bottom, and side promise neutrality, even escape from hierarchy. Yet masculinity remains the dominant currency. Femininity, when present, is often displaced—kept partial, implied, or deferred.
This work sits within that tension. The curtain marks the boundary between performance and interior life. What is shown aligns with expectations of hardness and control; what remains concealed suggests softness, ambivalence, or desire that exceeds easy classification. The hand holding the fabric reveals effort—the labor involved in maintaining the divide.
Side Fem names a contradiction held in the body itself: a self-split between visibility and protection, between what can be shown without penalty and what must remain private. The work asks not for resolution, but for recognition of that ongoing negotiation—and of the selves that persist in its shadow.
-Ian Stone, 2025
