Homewood artist Don Stewart packs big ideas into ballpoint pen pieces

When you first look at one of local artist Don Stewart’s drawings, you might see one big picture — whether it be a photo of an animal, a musical instrument, a soldier or something else.

But take a closer look, and you’re bound to find dozens, maybe even hundreds, of smaller drawings tightly packed into the larger drawing.

“I want people to be able to see what they think they see, and then the closer they get and the more time they spend, they get more rewards from it,” Stewart said.

One of his professors from his time at Birmingham-Southern College observed that his artwork had an element of time to it that isn’t usually present in visual artwork.

“If you’re going to listen to the radio, you start to listen to the song or program, and you listen all the way through, and there’s a time investment. Same with dance and movies,” he said. “But with visual art, you might take a look and move on. … You usually get it in one snap. He pointed out to me that my pictures were different — they require you to stand and scratch your head for a bit.”

Stewart’s goal through his artwork is to find bad jokes and make them stick to paper, he said. For example, his piece called “Black Beary Bush” is a bear head made out of bushy leaves and blackberries. His “Baby Grand Piano” piece is a grand piano composed of assorted baby toys and infant care items.

All of Stewart’s pieces are drawn with a ballpoint pen, and he jokes that he is “terribly unschooled” in other forms of media. Stewart wasn’t an artist throughout his childhood and didn’t originally go to college for the purpose of learning art. He instead went to BSC for pre-med.

“While I was in pre-med, I took a basic drawing course, and that kind of ruined me for medicine,” he said.

The head of the department called him into his office and tried to convince Stewart that he was an illustrator, telling him he “has no business in the science building.” He convinced Stewart to take more art classes.

In total, he took three art courses during his undergraduate studies at BSC. During one of his final exams, his assignment was to make one large picture out of smaller pictures.

“If there was a defining moment for me, that was it,” he said. He chose to draw a portrait of Pablo Picasso made out of objects lying around the studio. It was incredibly fun and satisfying, he said.

“I thought man, this must be what medical school will be like,” he said, laughing. “A lot of thinking and a lot of planning, and you come up with a solution, and you offer it to your patient, and everyone’s happy. As it happened, medical school was not like that at all. The amount of creativity that goes into medical school is the amount of creativity that goes into what color tie you’re going to wear in the morning.”

He graduated from UAB with a degree in medicine and went to the Mayo Clinic for his surgical residency, but he said that’s all he could stand. “By the time I got into my residency, they had taken away all of my creative time,” he said. “I literally had a 24-7 call schedule, and that doesn’t give you time to do anything.”

He left the hospital and went into art, which has now been his career for 36 years.

Stewart has lived in Homewood for 19 years and has a gallery downtown at 2805 Crescent Ave. He shares this gallery with his wife, Sue Ellen Brown, whose colorful illustrations are juxtaposed with Stewart’s black-and-white ball-point pen illustrations.

Visit dsart.com for more information.