“We young artists are like young sailors:
unless we encounter rough seas and are buffeted by the winds, we’ll not become
real sailors. There is no mercy for us, everyone has to go through a period of
worry and struggle if he wants to go into deep water” – Stuart Sutcliffe.

Although Stuart Sutcliffe’s working life was so short, spanning only 6 years, one influence lasted throughout this period, the work of Nicolas De Stael. An important
proponent of Tachism (the French equivalent of Abstract Expressionism), De Stael would divide a canvas into numerous sections of colour, predominantly blue, red and white, with traces of the brush and palette knife visibly evident through a thick impasto application of paint. His style would alternate from figurative to abstraction with his later work predicting the direction of much of the contemporary work that came after him, including Pop Art.  This influence was heightened in Stuart’s later Hamburg work through the tutelage of Eduardo Paolozzi, a British protagonist of Pop Art, though Pop Art is the one influence that doesn’t resonate in Stuart’s work. Considering his involvement with The Beatles and his love of Rock ‘n’ Roll his work was removed from the ever-growing pop culture influence and would stay more in line with the European avant-garde, namely Expressionism, Tachism and Kitchen Sink Realism. De Stael and England’s David Bomberg may be seen as  connecting links between Expressionism and the austere Kitchen-Sink realism, and an intertwining thread to the two influences on Stuart’s work.

Stuart’s early work was bold in colour with heavy gestural marks, figurative abstraction of the banal and everyday. His shift to complete abstraction, where the painted surface became a gestural expression, or an action, pays further tribute to the influence of Tachism and Abstract Expressionism – both major influences in the 1950s. A term closely associated with Abstract Expressionism and used synonymously by some critics was Action Painting. It’s like dreaming, when you enter into a subconscious state where your thoughts, worries and emotions are processed. With Action Painting the subconscious is brought to life as the artist’s innermost thoughts, worries and emotions are spread across the painted surface, almost like automatic writing with a performance element. The gestural result is a question of paint as a medium, a substance that can become an
extension of the artist and a close link to an innermost expression.

Stuart made a remarkable amount of work in his short working life. It is these pieces and the unquestionable notion of potential that continue to generate intrigue and admiration of Stuart’s mark on the world.