Asheville artist's Halloween series comes 5 years after life-changing health scare

 

 "It's fun that you can turn a white space into something," explained Amar Stewart of Asheville, who's spent months working on paintings for his online Halloween show, which debuts Friday at online.

Stewart might be the first to admit that his work has been rather horrific lately, featuring the likes of Michael Myers of "Halloween." His series of small paintings capture scary and iconic movie characters. You'll see Annie Wilkes from "Misery," Jason from "Friday the 13th," and Pennywise, the clown from "It."

Four-by-four inches is a small medium for these larger than life subjects and kind of a nightmare to create.

"Every day I go home and my hand is like clumped up," says Stewart. "I have like a claw at the end of every day because you're working on such a small scale."

The artist comes to Asheville from the United Kingdom.

"The work that I'm most well known for is hip-hop art. Hip-hop inspired art," he said, with known pieces celebrating everyone from Run-DMC to Tupac Shakur.

Art has always helped him take his mind off his worst fears, but five years ago he needed it more than ever.

"I had Stage 4 tongue cancer. That's why my voice sounds like this, they removed my tongue," he told News 13.

His tongue was surgically rebuilt using muscles from his leg.

"My speech was so impaired that I couldn't really, um... I couldn't have any sort of way to talk to people," Stewart says.

Back then, painting gave him a voice and a source of confidence.

"It definitely helped me through some of the hardest times," he said.

Credit wlos.com