The artist Dan Mair has a formal art education having studied at his local comprehensive, his foundation at the Surrey Institute of Art and Design and his bachelor and master’s degrees at University of the Arts London.

 

In 2017 he enrolled at Wimbledon College of Arts under his artistic alter ego Stanley Black, who he had created as a mechanism to return to the artworld. His initial aim was to formulate a personality for his alter by exploring being and identity through the use of persona. Stanley Black emerged as a dissident, a contrarian and general scallywag. He describes himself as a political artist but in the left leaning sphere of the art world, culturally he promotes the wrong type of politics. He is currently investigating political art as a pursuit and the role of the political artist. Often working with found items and prefabricated goods he tries to explore the function, use and value of art and by doing so question his own function, use and value as an artist.

 

Stanley Black continues his adventures in the artworld, sometimes exploring his wrong-think but is always trying to gain respectability and acceptance.