Side masc
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 flexed arm emerges from behind a curtain, isolated and self-contained. The muscle is pronounced, deliberate, held in place. What is visible is performance practiced to completion. Within contemporary gay culture, masculinity often functions as proof—of desirability, safety, legitimacy.
Muscle becomes a language learned early and refined over time, a way to occupy space without question. In this work, the body presents not vulnerability, but discipline. The curtain marks what is withheld. It suggests that the display is selective: strength without softness, surface without interior. The arm does not reach so much as declare. It holds itself steady, rehearsed and legible.
Side Masc names a posture shaped by survival. It asks how often masculinity must be performed to feel secure, and what parts of the self are displaced to maintain that performance. What appears effortless here is, in fact, the result of constant calibration.
- Ian Stone, 2025
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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.