About:
Stuart T Loughridge
Born: September 1978 in Denver, Colorado, North America
Formal Training:
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Atelier 1999 - 2002 (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
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St. Paul Art Academy, Figure Painting, 2015-2019
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and a lot of self-teaching
Mediums: oil painting, watercolor, copper-plate etching, serigraph, pencil, pen & ink, hand-crafted frames, hand-crafted substrates, etcetera, etcetera
Some of my oldest memories are looking over my father’s shoulder as he lays in the washes of watercolor over those quivering pencil lines, and brings that landscape before us into the paper. A collection of artwork, dead and alive, hung thick throughout the house; all with hand-crafted frames, carved and gilded. When my father wasn’t painting he was operating the frame shop, Dry Creek Gold Leaf, which was a generous employer and educator throughout my teenage years. In high-school the art teachers kept me on track to graduate, and afterwards I was encouraged to pursue my training at the Atelier. I’ve been operating a studio in Saint Paul since 2003, with artwork the sole generator of my income.
Watercolor sketching on Lake Superior
In the studio are hundreds of sketches, the short-hand notes on light-effects, clouds, trees, compositional thoughts, etc; all done on location. Most of these works on paper measure no larger than 7x10”, some as small as 2x3”. Sketches and sketch-books line the shelf, watercolors, pencil drawings - a veritable archive. I use these precious sketches and notes as reference when composing and developing studio-works. Sketching from life is one of my greatest joys.
When working in the studio I am not so interested in the factual or the “honest,” but more so the best way to view the scenery, with my own artificial and whimsical injections. In this sense, photographs are of only so much help in achieving the final goal, and rarely does Nature alone satisfy my whims. A loose sketch will incite my imagination, and that’s the aim - to put my mind in to the creative zone and see what I come up with.