Atlanta-based artist Shawn Stewart shares his unique journey.
It all began with a blank dining room wall in 2016. Eager to find some art to decorate the space in his new Atlanta condo, football-player-turned-credit-analyst Shawn Stewart decided to try his hand at creating his own work. Little did he know it would be the beginning of a brand new career.
Football had been Stewart’s focus since he was 7, taking him through college (where he studied engineering) and onto arena ball. He’d only stopped playing for a couple of years when he found himself headed to Walmart to pick up some painting materials, heading down a new path that would lead to gallery exhibitions and major commissions.
“I really liked how that first piece turned out, but most of all I liked how the act of painting made me feel,” Stewarts explains. “Football was my physical outlet, but art for me is a mental, emotional outlet.”
While he initially gave away his art for free to friends and family, Stewart was finally convinced by a friend that he should see his work as more than just a hobby. After accepting a few commissions, things quickly snowballed.
“Taking on those commissions really got me to exercise that muscle regularly, and that’s how I kept working on my craft,” Stewart says. “Now, I feel like my artistic style has developed more towards representing my own personality. I’m a very literal person, I always pay attention to the little details, and my art has become increasingly detailed and realistic. It’s been attaching itself to different parts of me that I didn’t even know were there, things I didn’t even necessarily know I cared about.”
Through this exploration, Stewart has found himself honing in on a distinctive style of portraiture that fuses hyperrealism with a bright, energetic use of color and a close attention to every physical detail.
“Human beings are so special, because nobody has been through what you’ve been through, and a lot of that shows up on our person — our face, the way we stand, the way we cut our hair,” Stewart explains. “I appreciate the story that portraiture can allow you to tell, and I want the viewer to have their own conversation with the work. I want to capture every line in a chapped lip, because even that can open up a lot of thoughts about a person’s life.”
It was this impressive portraiture style that landed Stewart one of his most exciting commissions to date—although it didn’t come without an unexpected challenge.
“I’d done a a couple of pieces for reality TV people, and one of their agents reached out to me about another commission — turns out, it was for a birthday portrait of Shaquille O'Neal. I was even invited to the party to present it to him. But the night I got that call, a guy ran into me and broke my finger during my company's soft ball game— of course, it was on the hand I paint with. But I did it, even with that broken finger, and it turned out amazingly. He actually had his team reach out to me to do more pieces for his Atlanta home.”
That dedication and discipline—which served Stewart so well on the football field—is what allowed Stewart to carve out his space in the art world. A circle that can tend towards being insular and driven by a “who you know” mentality, Stewart instinctively felt that he was coming to it as an outsider, given his lack of professional training and industry connections. His solution? To let his art speak for itself.
“I’m not a very sociable person, it’s not easy for me to make random connections out of thin air. So I asked God that whatever I create, let it speak for itself, let it have its own voice and draw its own attention. A lot of times, I’ll do shows and stand right by my work and nobody thinks I’m the artist. My art really is my way into those rooms, because you get to a certain point where you can’t ignore what I’m putting out there, and you have to have a conversation with me — even if I’m too nervous to have it with you.”
And this is only the beginning. Having carved out his own space in the Atlanta scene, Stewart now has his eyes set on the global stage.
“Like any other artist, I want my art to have the chance to see the world, to go as far as it can and see as many faces as it can. I want it to inspire, wherever that’s in Zimbabwe or North Carolina.”