Peter Matthews (artist)

Peter Matthews (born 1978) is an English artist who specialises in creating paintings while immersed in water, often floating on, or submerged in, oceans. This timescale of this process can range from several hours to a few days. He works with art materials strapped about his person, and allows the movement of the ocean and its waves to paint his pictures for him. He has been identified as being part of a long English tradition of maritime art, whilst his abstract style has been compared to that of American expressionist Jasper Johns. His creative process has occasionally led him into danger, and has resulted in his receiving injuries, and even catching diseases. 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 1978.[2] Originally from Derby, he spent much of his youth exploring the countryside of Derbyshire, particularly its forests and rivers. Matthews ascribes these early hikes to his attraction to solitude. In an interview with BBC News, he described his feeling of allure to the "mysterious and omnipresent call of the wild."[3] As an artist, however, Matthews calls Cornwall his "ancestral" home.[3] His 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[2][3] near-death experience. This occurred while he was surfing off Mexico, 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, Hawaii,[2] and Taiwan.[5] In doing so, he can spend long periods—ranging from hours to days—[3] floating or submerging[1] in the ocean.[3] He keeps his artistic media either cached in his hat[3] or strapped to his wrists or ankles.[5] This includes charcoal and gel pens, and the surfaces he draws on can range from paper to canvas sheeting,[3] pinned to "old piece of plywood" which acts both as a drawing board and a 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 methood 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)[3] and on other occasions being swept away or sinking in the sea.[8] Problems Matthews personally faces are those of his environment[3]—he has suffered numbness,[1] hypothermia and sunstroke, as well as receiving dog-, snake-, jellyfish- and insect-bites.[3] As a result, his working method has been described "eccentric."[1] To get himself in the mindset to create the piece entitled With the Forces of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, Matthews constructed a speaker system out of a CD player and a tripod. He then played himself recordings of the sound of the Pacific Ocean over a period of days, floating in the Atlantic Ocean.[1] On one occasion Matthews submerged himself to the 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, with sale prices in the Saatchi Gallery reaching thousands of pounds.[3] His work has been exhibited in Wirksworth, Turin, Dortmund, Folkestone,[1][2] and Laguna Beach.[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

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.
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