Mother of Pearl (Shell)
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:
I have always been drawn to objects that seem to change as you look at them. As a child, I remember moving my head back and forth in front of pearlescent surfaces and watching colours appear that seemed impossible to locate within the object itself. Pink would become green, blue would become gold. Their beauty wasn't fixed; it depended on light, movement and looking.
These three paintings bring together objects from my collection through that shared attraction. The pearls belonged to my grandmother and carry a very specific personal history. The shell and the small porcelain horse came to me differently, but I was drawn to them for much the same reason: their surfaces possess that same shifting, almost impossible colour. Collecting is a way of building a world when history doesn't hand you one, and I am interested in the ways objects accumulate around us through inheritance, attraction, memory and recognition. Some arrive carrying histories we know intimately; others become meaningful simply because, for reasons we may not entirely understand, we choose to keep them.
Still life allows me to give these objects the kind of attention normally reserved for things considered more important. Painting them becomes a way of preserving not only the objects themselves, but the act of being drawn to them. Objects can stand in for histories that were never written down: what someone valued, what they kept close, what they considered beautiful. Their meanings shift as they pass between people and generations, just as their pearlescent surfaces shift according to where we stand. The object remains, but what we see in it changes.
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Born in Montreal (1982), Stone studied printmaking at NSCAD University before completing an MFA in painting and drawing at Concordia University. His early training in printmaking continues to inform his approach to image construction, visible in the layered, deliberate process through which his compositions are staged, photographed, and translated into painting.
Stone has exhibited across Canada and internationally. His work is held in public and private collections, including the Florida State University Museum and the National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Bulgaria. Stone continues to develop a practice that bridges historical painting techniques with contemporary narratives.