Douglas Stichbury

Born in Palmerston North, New Zealand, Douglas Stichbury lives and works between Brooklyn, New York, and Hong Kong. His works are held in the collections of both the Wellington City Council and James Wallace Arts Trust; and he has been Artist in Residence at institutions across China, Germany, Austria, and New Zealand.

Stichbury's work is heavily influenced by speculative science fiction, which he says inspires most of his pieces. But while his primary medium is painting, the nature of his subject forces him to innovate. To meet the challenge of depicting from imagination, Stichbury utilises industrial software more commonly found in cinema and engineering, to digitally plan his work. Using a dry-brush technique, he then grounds the esoteric imagery with black oil paint on linen so that it assumes tangible materiality.

The result, are quasi-illusory worlds which draw the viewer into their artificial depth, though at the same time foreground the canvas' surface - creating tension between one's immersion in, and awareness of the fiction.