Dylan Matthews
“My life hasn’t been an easy one,” Matthews recalls, “I lived in a few different foster homes growing up, before going out on my own in my late teens. I was never really bitter or angry, but I have lived life wandering on the edges. I’m an observer with a passion to chronicle the details of our world.” Matthews has worked many types of jobs over the decades including construction, mechanic, commercial fisherman, and private tutor. He has occasionally taken classes in photography, architecture, and history, but is an artist who is truly educated and informed by life’s experiences. Never staying too long in one place, Matthews begin to photograph some of the details of his travels. What started as simply creating a record of his nearly constant wandering developed into an artistic passion.
As he matured, Matthews begin to experiment with painting and eventually he not only expressed his personal vision in both mediums, but also occasionally combined the two. He is interested in looking at symbols from the past that we all share, and then altering these symbols with a contemporary perspective. The focus of Matthew’s images tends to be recognizable objects and many of his current works evoke a sense of romantic nostalgia. But the color and tone he favors stand as a reminder of age and the passing of time. There is an underlying gritty toughness to his work that speaks to Mathew’s own life experience. The vintage mechanical objects that are so important to this artist may have lost their youthful sheen in the passing years, but their proud strength remains as a reminder of a sometimes glorious past.
The Dylan Matthews Collection
