Stuart's approach to making his work, is part intellectual and part aesthetic. Steeped in the history of the English landscape paintings of the 18th Century, Stuart's interest in the landscape is informed by the concept of the picturesque as defined by William Gilpin. Keen to challenge the predominance of the Grand Tour for the cultural tourist, Gilpin argued in favour of the British landscape, with its ruined abbeys, wild mountains and windswept lakes. His rallying call was answered by the painters of the period, who transformed our visual understanding of the countryside with such success that even today their vision and interpretation of Britain continues to inform a particular romantic view of Britain.

Stuart is caught between his admiration for these paintings, the mark on the canvas, the textures of the brushstrokes, and the romanticism of the landscape with a deep mistrust of how such a manipulated interpretation has created a false perception of what Britain really looks like.

Working on the premise that any image of a landscape is in fact an imagined place, created with the familiar elements of trees, grass, clouds, architecture, Stuart has sought to reduce these elements to a single prompt or visual reference. Isolating his chosen detail on a black backdrop and highlighting it with the use of directional light, Stuart asks the viewer to respond to his prompt by bringing their own memories to the scene in order to fill in the missing elements.

The places and objects Stuart chooses to photograph are discovered while out walking during the day. In daylight such places offer little mystery or interest as under a uniform light objects compete with each other to command our attention. But at night, with the use of studio lighting techniques Stuart brings our attention to the single object he wants to show.

This reduction of the scene to this single point of interest simultaneously upsets the past interpretations of the landscape while bringing a new and fresh view that is essentially photographic in nature. Because it asks us, as the viewers, to bring our imagination to the scene it begins to create a different imaginative visual language and in so doing it brings photography within the tradition of British landscape art.