Peter Matthews (artist)

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Peter Matthews (born October, 1978) is an English artist who has developed a practice of creating drawings while immersed in the ocean and paintings created over days or weeks of being in solitude along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. He works with art materials hiked into the landscape, strapped about his person, hidden in caches along the coast and using found objects on the beach. Since 2007, his drawings made directly in the ocean record the movement of the ocean, the passage and experience of time and the live natural environment that he immerses himself into, often straddling a degree of vulnerability to his being in the process. His work is known as being produced as a lived experience while in nature alone, and he has worked in a diverse range of natural environments in México, Japan, Chile, Costa Rica, England, the U.S., Brazil and Taiwan. He has been identified as being part of a long English tradition of

creative process has occasionally led him into danger, and has resulted in his receiving injuries. Matthews' work has been exhibited internationally, as well as being used to illustrate aspects of scientific research in marine biology
.

Background

Big grey seals often pop up," says Matthews, who has been working for years around the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall, wild-camping on the cliffs near Coverack. "When I'm exhausted and lie on the rocks to try and generate a bit of heat, the seals come up really close. Those unexpected things in nature are fascinating.[1]

Peter Mathews was born in

maternal grandfather "sold fish in Leicester," says Matthews, "so I like to think it's in my roots," on working at sea . Although he personally rejects the description of environmental artist,[1] he has also been called an "ocean based visual artist,"[4] and on one occasion even a "mystical waterman."[5] His work, focussed on the sea as it is, has been identified as part of a long tradition of British artists' fascination with the maritime, which includes artists as Turner (Fishermen at Sea and Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour's Mouth) and Constable (Seascape Study with Rain Clouds). Andrew Friend, a contemporary of Matthews,' also takes an immersive approach to his own seascapes.[6][7]

Matthews' original inspiration for his way of working was a 2007

Zipolite in Oaxaca when the sea became increasingly rough and he became separated from his surfboard.[3] He was eventually hit by a rogue wave;[1] by then he was "floundering in the ocean with a gut-wrenching sense of fear, being completely at the mercy of the ocean," he later recalled.[3]

Technique

A painting called "Interim" by Peter Matthews, made in the sea, and looking all scratchy.
Matthews' Interim (2017), created using oil, acrylic, pencil and oil bar on canvas, illustrates his technique.

Matthews' has created his work in the Earth's oceans, Cornwall,

floatation device.[1] Working this way, it has been said, helps Matthews try and capture the state of suspension people feel while they are bobbing in the water. This method also allows him to explore—in his words—"the fluid midpoint between sea and land, thought and form."[1] Matthews often enters the water at dawn and may stay immersed until nightfall, and effectively "lets the ocean do the work for him";[3] sometimes the work is left exposed to the elements and tides overnight in which the piece continues its natural development.[3] Matthews has described himself as merely being the "instrument" by which the sea "draw[s] itself."[8]

Matthews' work has itself encountered danger, having been buried on a beach by a mudslide (never to be found again)

ocean bed where he used waterproof ink on canvasses weighted down with rocks, whilst, when in California, he slept in the Californian desert and painted with "one of the blackest paints on Earth."[5]

Reception

For A Mystical Exchange of Energies he sprayed nine litres of Pacific ocean, collected during typhoon Nanmodal in August 2011, into the Atlantic using a fire extinguisher—transferring one ocean into the other.[1]

Matthews has exhibited internationally since 2003 after graduating with an MA in Fine Art from the

Felix Gonzalez-Torres and many others. Matthews has shown his art at numerous galleries, museums and institutions including the Drawing Center, New York; The North Carolina Museum of Contemporary Art; the National Maritime Museum, London; the Royal Academy of Arts, London; the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; the Künstlerforum Bonn, Bonn, Germany; the Saatchi Gallery, London, the James Cohan Gallery, New York and Mendes Wood DM in São Paulo, Brazil amongst others. [5] He has lectured for university audiences (at, for instance, the University of California, San Diego),[4] and was the artist-in-residence at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.[5]

Matthews' style has been compared—in its "scratchy, abstract" nature—with the work of Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns, but with a greater degree of stream of consciousness, often bordering "the brilliant and the ridiculous."[1] Other critic's comments have described his work as "mind-boggling oceanography with Native American mythology, plus a splash of quirky inventiveness,"[5] and as being "nervously textured."[7] The University of California, San Diego has used Matthews work as an example of how popular interest in subjects such as marine biology and maritime history can be developed and encouraged.[4]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Frizzell 2016.
  2. ^ a b c Drawing Room 2017.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o BBC News 2018.
  4. ^ a b c UC San Diego 2017.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g Hansen 2016.
  6. ^ Kerr & Payne 2014, p. 61.
  7. ^ a b Vandenbrouck 2014.
  8. ^ a b CBC Radio 2017.

Sources

  • BBC News (30 March 2018). "Searching for the sublime: The man who paints in the ocean". BBC News. Archived from the original on 30 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  • CBC Radio (2017). "Artist Peter Matthews gets intimate with nature by bringing his art into the ocean". CBC Radio. Archived from the original on 30 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  • Drawing Room (2017). "Peter Matthews". Drawing Room. Archived from the original on 30 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  • Frizzell, N. (2016). "Meet the underwater artist inspired by a near-death experience". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  • Hansen, D. (2016). "Hansen: Artist gets physical to explore metaphysical concepts". L. A. Times. Archived from the original on 30 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  • Kerr, J.; Payne, C., eds. (2014). The Power of the Sea: Making Waves in British Art 1790–2014. Bristol: Sansom & co.
    ISBN 978-1-908326-57-7
    .
  • UC San Diego (2017). "Peter Matthews: New Drawings, Paintings, and Other Visual Happenings from the Pacific Ocean". UC San Diego. Archived from the original on 30 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  • Vandenbrouck, M. (2014). "Review: 'The Power of the Sea' at the Royal West of England Academy". Apollo: The International Art Magazine. Archived from the original on 30 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018.

External links

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