Original artwork description:

Hand painted ink on vintage book pages from Emma, by Jane Austen. A novel about youthful hubris and the perils of misconstrued romance. The work is beautifully mounted on canvas and wooden stretchers ready to hang.

Cain creates beautiful and intriguing imagery by painting carefully composed figures on vintage book. Any space between the figures exposes a background, which gives them context and narrative.

Book pages only come alive when they are read. The passing of time and trends will shape a reader’s interpretation of a book. These influences are often reflected in annotations or sketches that a reader leaves behind. As time continues to pass, the annotations or sketches are observed within the context of the page by future readers.

My work attempts to show compositions that radiate a sense of this interaction between the narrative structure and the superimposed presence of the reader. The subjects are turned away from the observer with their body language seemingly engages in the narrative, which remains magically exclusive.

My continuing fascination with contextually embedded human relationships, their complexity, interaction and emotional journey, acts as the main focus and motivation for creating my original work.

Stuart James Cain
Cambridge, UK

Materials used:

Brushed indian ink on vintage book pages on canvas and stretchers

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