Originally from Waco, Texas, Stewart said he always wanted to be an artist. He painted as a child and continued on to receive a master's degree in fine art from the University of Texas at Austin. After his studies he followed the beatnik generation and spent time in New York during the 1960s and '70s before relocating to Taos in the '80s. Here, he found inspiration in the New Mexican landscape.

An immigrant to Oaxaca, Stewart has continued to produce artwork, predominantly non-representational painting. He said his work is influenced by abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, and he holds a deep affection for Spanish artists such as Francisco Goya and Diego Velásquez.

His most recent experimentation with color was inspired from the people of Oaxaca and their craft for creating color textiles. Stewart is combining mixed media such as oil paint and watercolors with cochinilla, a luxe scarlet dye derived from the dried cochineal insect. "I'm experimenting right now with some cochinilla, which is a dye that they [Oaxacans] use," Stewart said, "….It's a beautiful red."

Stewart's work is in the permanent collections at the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, The Watermill Collection in New York, Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey and others. Most recently at the Taos Center for the Arts, alongside Brian Shields, Stewart participated in a show titled "Dreaming the Land" last October and November. He has also had solo exhibits and been part of group shows in California, New York and Paris, France.