The emotive and spontaneous artwork of Stevie Dix

Stevie Dix is a Belgium-born artist whose education and home life have always been creatively fuelled. “My mum’s a sculptor and painter, my dad is a musician and cartoonist; my siblings and I have always been painting and drawing and playing music.” In her teenage years Stevie attended an artistically focused high school, “a type of schooling in Belgium where you can choose all art subjects and very little else”.

Upon graduating the artist was at a loss at what to do, yearning for something different. “I packed my bags and moved to London. On a bit of a whim.” While here, Stevie began to look at art in an alternative way, making steps towards developing her independent practice. As a result her work has been exhibited around the UK, Germany and Belgium and will be exhibited at the Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia early next year. Relocating to Suffolk, the artist shares a studio with her husband, “in rural Suffolk in an amazing building on an old American air base”.

Stevie’s work is largely “gestural, informal and spontaneous”. The artist’s practice began as abstract paintings, “with hints of figurative forms that come to light as the work progresses.” With an obsession of “textures, movement and the idea of spontaneous gesture”, her work emulates these qualities through mediums of “oil paint, spray paint and anything at hand”.

As a result Stevie’s paintings are largely scaled and emotive. “It’s not a relaxing process for me to create work. I rarely have set ideas of what I want to make and I don’t sketch stuff out first. I spend most days in the studio feeling quite anxious and frustrated, until the moment the work feels finished. Then I feel relieved, and excited."