A Short Word on Matthew’s Art
A Short Word on Matthew’s Art
Matthew Clarke’s landscapes allow us to stare into a dreamtime of the self.
Each character creates its own space; its very presence is a statement of its will to simply exist, forgetting reason, time and space.
This isn’t a matter of cultural preservation, nor a suggestion, but a demand that we recognize this is a dream-world that lives and breathes within every one of us.
Matthew draws out these visions with a direct force of personality that compels us to take a step back. And in doing so, we stop looking closer to “understand” this art, but instead give each vision the space it demands to simply be. In doing so, the ease with which these wordless stories touch us abandons all need for effort to compare; investigate; analyse; pull them to pieces.
This visual excess spills forth from each canvas, welling up within us. An unspoken message holds the potential to disturb deep, secret pools and channels within our own mind’s eye.
Matthew’s “force” is an affirmation that visions be respected. It “shouts out” for each of us to safeguard the incomprehensible. Clear, rational, logical progressions can never move us with such direct and honest emotion.
So, whatever you do, don’t try to understand why “Matthew Does Art,” but what “Art” really is. If you asked Matthew, he might tell you art is simply to take whatever is going on inside and put it onto that canvas. However you manage to do this is entirely up to you.
Our associations between the consensuses on “good art” have been compelled by revolutions such as the Renaissance and Modernist periods to point ever upward, on what seems an endless trajectory of producing work that can more strictly represent reality. Slowly, though, we see the world look for feeling that transcends any perfection of skill: that mysterious liberation of the heart.
For those who exhibit Matthew’s work, each painting represents an embrace of the less celebrated, yet priceless quality of art as transcending perfection by endowing the ignored with meaning.
Matthew Clarke is a painter from Warrnambool. He cites Jimmy Pike, James Gleeson and Pablo Picasso as key influences in his work and is a member of Quarry Art Studio, a member of WDEA art program and is currently studying at South West Tafe, Warrnambool.
