Amazing digital brushstrokes and figures in Matthew Stone's new Healing with Wounds series

A mass of bodies, limbs and expressive digital brushstrokes, artist Matthew Stone’s work is as strange as it is beautiful. Having worked with artists including FKA twigs alongside his personal practice, the artist is now showing a series of new digital paintings called Healing with Wounds at Somerset House in London.

The images look to raise questions about identity and conflict, all the while demonstrating deft digital skills. Each is created as a “virtual sculpture,” with lines created on computers before printed them onto raw linen. Shadows and foreshortening are then added to create a sense of depth and perspective.

The work forms part of the site’s Utopia celebrations, marking the 500th anniversary of Thomas More’s Utopia. While the images certainly have elements of a utopian vibe in their vibrant colours and fluid strokes, the piles of bodies lend themselves more to the weirder side of things. According to Somerset House, Matthew “seeks to highlight the central role that interdependency plays in shaping our capacity to heal” through depicting “diverse bodies both in play and at war.”