The artist's vibrant colored, arresting painting are born out of the exploration of printmaking techniques like decalcomania - a process which enables engravings and prints to be transferred to pottery or other materials - in this case, onto canvas. It is a technique which was explored by a number of artists in the 1930s, notably Surrealists such as Oscar Dominguez who referred to his work as 'decalcomania with no preconceived object'.

Stefan is intrigued by the idea of fusing technological processes from the past with traditional practices in order to create a synthesis that far from being retrograde, allows for the evolution of his medium. He talks about the unpredictability and lack of control which accompanies painting: 'I don't want to make choices, I want to ask questions regarding the material, so I use the chance encounters to determine what's going to happen on the canvas... I like building the stage for a painting that happens like a naturally occurring visual phenomenon such as the aurora borealis, a thunder strike, frost or even condensation... any chemical or physical reaction that leaves a visual trace or some kind of pattern that can imprint on various surfaces'.

Stefan's paintings are evocative of natural wonders. Some dazzle us with apparent cosmological constructions that resemble clusters of stars - orbs of pale yellow, viridian green and ruddy pink situated in the midst of dense black grounds. Stefan's deliberate process makes it difficult for the eye to settle on his paintings' surfaces. Instead, like trying to find the horizon line in fog, the light bounces back at us, constantly shifting. One moment we are drawn into microscopic, even macroscopic details, at another we are expelled, forced back to try and 'read' the night or landscape that is actually a series of marks like pixels. In common with a CT scan, the images that Stefan makes can only be made possible with the aid of technology. The idea of seeing something that is confirmed by a scientific process and can only be translated into a readable image through this procedure is fascinating to Stefan. He is drawn to 3D scans, satellite photographs, cosmology, the animation of black holes and dark matter. Stefan's interest also extends to the geological and physical - scans of caves, prehistoric skulls, neurological pathways and models of nerve endings. All of these surious meanderings find their way into the artist's mind and paintings.

Painting is - and always has been - an elastic and absorbent medium for new techniques. It might require a shift in thinking for Stefan and for all contemporary painters, but the truth is that the digital field has opened new territories and opportunities for a medium and its practitioners that would otherwise be progressing very slowly. Far from being killed by advances in technology, painting has absorbed change and reinvented itself yet again.           Text by Jane Neal