Stuart Vance

PROVENANCE: Courtesy of the Artist

Hauntingly beautiful view of the underside of Granville Bridge in Vancouver, BC. The intricate weaving of structural and architectural elements with various hues of blue, green, and dark purple reflects the solemn beauty of the British Columbian landscape. The bridge is framed by an unusual rectangle of off-white canvas that further formalizes and abstracts the image, giving it the feel of a large print or work on paper.

Stuart Cameron Vance creates colorful, rhythmic landscape paintings that draw from a broad range of influences including aerial survey photography, topographical maps, Japanese woodblock prints, and the Abstract Expressionist painters of the 1950s and 1960s. His work explores the tension and connection between the natural world and epic, human-built structures and systems. Raised in Los Angeles, California, Vance lived and breathed amidst the city’s sprawling freeways, roadways, and cement waterways that later came to be the focus of his work. Eventually moving to the northern portion of the state, he studied printmaking and painting at the San Francisco Art Institute and graduated with a BFA in 1984. Following a romantic instinct, Vance moved to New York City to work and study with conceptual provocateur Robin Winters and minimalist painter Pat Steir. It was at this point that he began formulating the idea that all human activity is natural, and that everything in nature is, in its essence, art.

At the beginning of the internet era, Vance took a break from painting to study digital storytelling and design at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, then went on to work with some of the biggest players in the nascent digital landscape, contributing his ideas about art and design as an art director and creative director at early online women’s network, iVillage, and the Disney Digital Network. 

Vance’s current work endeavors to humanize the way we think about infrastructure and transportation. His paintings continue to explore his belief that if we are ever to bring our lives into harmony with nature, we have to think—and feel—poetically about that the things we build and the way we move ourselves around.