markanthonystone.com

Mark Anthony Stone is a traditional artist living in central Victoria, Australia. He was born in 1972 to a farming family, and childhood memories of the drought-struck landscape, and the harsh realities of rural life continue to inform his work. At the age of 13, he was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, which saw him turn towards art as part of his recovery, and art quickly became his way of life. He left school at sixteen to study watercolour painting full-time with a private teacher, and has painted continuously since that time, winning many prizes and exhibiting his work widely, being represented in private collections both in Australia and overseas. He recently completed a BA at LaTrobe University Bendigo, majoring in philosophy.

"I believe that there will always be a place for traditional painting and drawing, for as long as there are human beings. These artforms are not merely an archaic means of imitating nature, but rather a unique human language, which can never be superceded by modern technology. Painting is able to say things which cannot be said in any other way.

"In a world overwhelmed with looming threats from our own Promethean science and industry, traditional hand-crafted works of art can speak on an intimate human level, and assert the timeless continuities of human experience. My work is informed by dissenting thinkers like John Ruskin, William Morris, and A. K. Coomaraswamy who questioned the premises of modernity and mass-production in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as artists like Andrew Wyeth, Lucian Freud and Odd Nerdrum, who have demonstrated once again the relevance and power of traditional painting to the contemporary world."