The Scribbled Sacred: Exploring the Mixed Media Works of Stuart Wallace
- ajanecharnley
- Jun 26
- 4 min read
Stuart Wallace – Represented Artist at Blo Back Gallery in Pueblo, Colorado
Blo Back Gallery in Pueblo, Colorado is proud to represent Stuart John Wallace, a dynamic mixed media and abstract artist whose powerful, textured work has captivated art lovers across Colorado and beyond. Based right here in Pueblo, CO, Wallace brings an international perspective and decades of creative innovation to our thriving local art scene. A graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute and founder of the design venture ARTIFACT, Wallace has exhibited in major art hubs including New York, Los Angeles, London, and Seattle. His unique artistic style—rooted in his experience with dyslexia, monocular vision, and a deeply personal journey through open-heart surgery—brings raw emotion and spatial complexity to every piece. As one of the leading contemporary artists in Pueblo, Colorado, Stuart Wallace’s work is a must-see for anyone exploring art galleries in Colorado. Visit Blo Back Gallery to experience Wallace’s expressive, layered paintings and be part of the growing creative movement in southern Colorado.
The Scribbled Sacred: Exploring the Mixed Media Works of Stuart Wallace
Stuart Wallace's work has a pulse. It hums with tightly-wound energy and layered introspection, weaving chaos and precision into one contained frame. His art doesn't shout—it scribbles, twists, and mutters its way into your psyche. The pieces in this series, including Cannabis Bud Study #2, Cannabis Bud Study #3, and Contorted Figure Study #4, are mixed media paintings—meditations on form, energy, and the handwritten residue of thought.
At first glance, these two companion pieces appear deceptively simple—a sketch of a budding form, centered within a minimalist watercolor wash. But the more you look, the more these works unravel like a slow whisper.
Wallace uses an ink-swirled abstraction to represent the cannabis plant—not as botanical realism, but as a tangled explosion of motion and memory. The looping lines are like neural pathways or storms in motion, contained only by their slender stalks. Pops of orange, olive, and ochre breathe warmth into the otherwise monochrome scribble.
What elevates these mixed media pieces is the poetic scrawl lining the borders. It's not instantly legible, and maybe that’s the point. Wallace invites the viewer to hover, to guess, to wonder whether these words are journal entries, scientific notations, or fragments of internal monologue. The result is intimate—almost voyeuristic—as if we’re peeking into the artist’s sketchbook or his subconscious.
The use of watercolor—blue washes, orange blooms, and soft bleed-throughs—grounds the images in organic softness. It complements the frenzied pen strokes, creating a tension between the natural and the nervous system-like structures of the buds.
Contorted Figure Study #4
In stark contrast, Contorted Figure Study #4 presents a darker, more architectural vision. Painted on raw fabric using mixed media techniques, the piece feels aged and archaeological—like a discovered relic. Five white columns stretch downward like legs or roots, holding up a line of twisted, colorful, vaguely anatomical shapes. They seem part creature, part machinery, part plant matter. Above them, a heavy black sky presses down, textured and oppressive.
Where the Cannabis Bud studies feel introspective, Contorted Figure Study leans toward a collective narrative. There's an industrial rhythm in this composition, as if the forms are part of a conveyor of distorted, once-living things. Again, we find Wallace's hallmark handwritten script—scribbled near the bottom edge, a reminder that thought and image are inseparable in his world.
The piece resonates with themes of mutation, survival, and transformation. It’s not literal, but it suggests evolution through distortion—like a meditation on pressure and what it forces us to become.
“Untitled Blob”
This piece feels both ancient and futuristic, like a fossil from an alien sea. The swirling mass of vibrant orbs and organic forms seem to pulse with life, each shape layered with texture and intention. With heavy black outlines that resemble cellular structures or ritual masks, Wallace evokes a sense of sacred anatomy—something elemental and deeply rooted in storytelling.
“Cosmic Inclusion”
Wallace takes abstraction to new celestial heights here. Vivid splashes of color swirl and collide with intricate monochrome contouring, offering a psychedelic map of energy, birth, and transformation. Black looping lines orbit the canvas like chaotic gravitational pulls, drawing together memories of Pollock’s motion with hints of subconscious biomorphic forms. There’s a cosmic violence in it, but also a sense of rebirth—chaos reorganizing into something divine.
The Wallace Signature
What ties these mixed media works together isn’t just ink and paper—it’s the feeling that we’re witnessing thought in motion. Wallace doesn’t sanitize or polish his expression. His works are raw and responsive. They embrace imperfection. They ask us to linger.
There’s something deeply human here: in the scribbles we can’t quite decode, in the plants rendered not for their look but for their energy, in the structures that feel both ancient and futuristic. Stuart Wallace isn’t painting objects—he’s painting process.
Wallace’s mixed media paintings remind us that to draw is to think, to scribble is to speak in tongues, and to frame something is to hold space for chaos to become sacred.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this glimpse into the work of one of our incredible represented artists. Writing about the art and artists at Blo Back Gallery is something I genuinely love—it’s my way of translating what I see and feel into words, and sharing that journey with you. These reflections are personal, intuitive, and from the heart. If this resonated with you, I warmly invite you to visit us in person and experience the work for yourself.
With gratitude,
Amanda Charnley Armstrong
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