Matthew Stone, the Artist Taking Painting into the Digital Realm

As his extraordinary new show opens in New York, Matthew Stone talks about working with FKA Twigs, and the possibilities of painting

What does painting mean in 2025? Gazing at Matthew Stone’s new works at The Hole NYC, the question feels impossible to ignore. The exhibition, titled Staggered Paintings, describes the way in which his paintings are constructed: layer upon layer, moving back and forth between mediums of oil paint and AI technology. ‘Staggered’ implies something disrupted, jolted, or momentarily thrown off balance, and perhaps this is where painting sits today, leaning towards a change as it confronts the unprecedented capacities of digital production, CGI modelling and AI-driven image-making. Rather than framing this as a battle between the old and the new, Stone treats it as an expanded field of possibility: his work insists that painting’s evolution is not a departure from craftsmanship but a reconsideration of what image-making can look like when the hand, the brushstroke and the digital tool all coexist within the same surface. 

“Over the last ten years or so, I’ve been experimenting with developing a digital painting practice,” Stone says. “Around 2014, I started thinking about taking painting into the digital realm. Initially, I painted on canvas, photographed the brushstrokes, and created entirely digital compositions.” This sustained experimentation has culminated in the paintings exhibited at The Hole NYC. “Now, with these new works, I’m returning to painting while incorporating the aesthetic possibilities developed through the digital process,” he says. “I photograph individual brushstrokes and use 3D-modelling software to construct figures and compositions. I then ‘stamp’ these brushstrokes onto the virtual models and render them in CGI software like Cinema 4D.”

At first glance, Stone’s paintings appear surprisingly analogue. The surfaces are dominated by enlarged, tactile brush marks that create thick sweeps of colour, partially obscuring the figures beneath, as though the viewer were looking at bodies behind frosted glass. The compositions are made up of figures, usually gathered in groups, their limbs leaning towards each other in a gentle caress. The starting point for each painting is a digital body, formed from the generic anatomical ‘T-pose’ (a format reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical studies and the Renaissance schema for proportional human design). “I then sculpt and choreograph the figures digitally, down to subtle details like the angle of a finger,” Stone explains. “I can reuse these figures across compositions, applying different poses or even transferring poses between models.” The resulting digital figures are then overlaid with photographed brushstrokes, producing images that feel simultaneously collaged and painted. They evoke dance troupes, celestial bodies in orbit, or the compositions belonging to Western religious painting. 

Stone’s fascination with bodies began when he became involved in the 2000s London nightclub scene, where he produced performances, worked as a photographer, and collaborated with designers such as Gareth Pugh. These environments foregrounded the body’s movement, its theatricality and its vulnerability, capacities that continue to permeate his current artistic work: “Working with dancers has made me deeply aware of the body and movement. This somatic awareness feeds into my paintings, even in digital form.” Stone’s interest in the intersection of corporeality and digital transformation extends into his long-standing collaboration with FKA Twigs. Their partnership began over a decade ago, well before Twigs’ rise to global fame. “I met Twigs early in her career,” Stone recalls. “Initially, I photographed her for i-D in 2012, which became one of her first high-profile covers. Working with her is highly collaborative; she’s multidisciplinary and very hands-on. We’ve created visuals for her album Magdalene. It’s about creating a high-drama aesthetic where we can experiment freely without commercial constraints.” 

Stone’s approach to painting asserts the continued relevance of the medium in an age shaped by image proliferation and algorithmic production. “I view painting as an archaic technology,” he says. “That doesn’t make it irrelevant; it’s a tool like any other. Painting has always evolved with new tools, from oil paint in tubes to canvas instead of wood.” His statement reframes the discourse: rather than defending painting against digital incursions, he situates it within a centuries-long lineage of evolving tools and techniques. Digital workflows, CGI and printing technologies are not threats to authenticity but simply the latest additions to painting’s technological vocabulary. While Stone embraces these tools, he remains deeply committed to the bodily, the emotive and the visceral. “I’ve always been drawn to the dramatic and physical presence of painting, inspired by artists like Caravaggio,” he explains. “While I explore digital techniques, painting itself remains a medium of intense, human expression.”

Today, Stone lives and works in Brockweir, a small village near the England-Wales border. “It’s peaceful and close to nature,” he says. After years in London, the rural landscape offers him a form of restoration, though he hints at the possibility of returning to the city in the future. As for painting’s direction in the decades to come, Stone remains optimistic. Digital tools may disrupt the image, he says, but painting’s capacity to explore light, colour, texture and emotion remains unparalleled. His practice suggests a future where painting is neither nostalgic nor obsolete, but adaptive, expansive and responsive to the contemporary experience. In the staggered space between analogue and digital, his paintings are continually absorbing new tools and continually redefining what it means to make an image in the 21st century.

Staggered Paintings by Matthew Stone is on show at The Hole in New York until 11 January 2026.