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matthew olds statement
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ARTIST STATEMENT
Being an artist has always been close to my heart as I am a fourth generation painter. As a result of that, I have always been surrounded by those whose salvation and destruction lie within our collective familial need to create and express. In witnessing and now actively participating in that lineage I have been able to draw upon the experiences of the past as foundations in creating new work.
I have always been drawn to the natural world and our interactions with
it. In observing man-made-structures from the past and knowing that their forms were once alive with mission, ideals, and use, but which are now dead or dying due to neglect, disrepair or demolition, reveals the mortality of their existence and ultimately our own. When passing these places on foot, by car, or in a plane, the landscape reveals itself as a living history of man’s past and present pursuits worthy of contemplation. In documenting these locations through painting, either on site or from memory, I am investigating the relationships of man-made-structures, man made events and time on the environment.
Using acrylic paint and mediums through a rich layering process, the
landscapes are realized from two different perspectives. The first perspective is a formal landscape and the second perspective is an aerial abstraction with the formal image implied but not named within the aerial abstraction. I work on a number of paintings at the same time and in doing so, a formal relationship and expressive dialogue develops between the two perspectives. These relationships and dialogues then determine if a piece is to stand alone or become a member of a multi-paneled work. Within this controlled arena of form and content, the painting is allowed to “happen” referring to the Abstract Expressionists tactic of responsive painting.
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