About

Stuart Shils, a renowned artist from Philadelphia, will be discussing the use and place of monotype in his working life over the last 20 years. He will be presenting an overview of his work along with some of his original work followed by a print demonstration.

Stuart will talk about how he began engaging with monotype in 1998 while experiencing the inclement west coast Irish weather. Loving the dramatic weather but unable to work in it, he used monotype as his response to the stormy and dramatic conditions. This practice became an indispensable and generative component of his process and evolved along side of his painting.

In the second portion of the morning’s presentation, Stuart will show us some simple demonstrations while talking about the direction of his thoughts, how we each shape our own languages as an extension of our individual experiences. This component of the day will very much be materials based, including an in-depth discussion of ink, paper, and other tools related to making monotypes.

About the Instructor
Stuart Shils painted outside and looking through windows for 30 years, but now is in the studio with an eye tuned to mining his cumulative visual memory. His current work includes figurative painting, collage, cut and torn paper on LED light tables, and monotype. Recently, he made improvisational window collages by day and night for a year, with torn paper and tape, shaping conversations on the kitchen window that now only exist by way of photo documentation.

Over time his work has been presented in solo shows in New York, Philadelphia, Tel Aviv, Boston, Scottsdale, Stuttgart, Los Angeles, Richmond, San Francisco and Cork (Ireland).

Critical review and commentary has appeared in newspapers, journals and magazines, including: The Brooklyn Rail, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Sun, Ha'aretz, The Jerusalem Post, artcritical.com, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Irish Times, Art in America, The New Republic, The New Criterion, Art New England, American Artist and The Hudson Review.

His summers working on the northwest coast of Ireland, an extended painting campaign, are described in the PBS film documentary, 'Ballycastle'.

Now though much of that is history and his thoughts turn, while walking his dear dog, to parsing the distinctive acoustical space of birds drawing with their voices in the morning forest.