Gary Matthews Fine Art

I am a Shrewsbury based artist specializing in portraiture. I have been an avid drawer from a young age.  From early on drawing for me was a means of telling stories as much as writing. I would create pictures and illustrations that would accompany my creative writing at school.  It was at a later age that I took up painting when I attended the University of Wolverhampton on the BA hons Fine Art painting course.

As my artwork has developed I have become more interested in portraiture and drawing the human form at the same time as attending life drawing classes. I retain an interest in narrative art that has carried over into my most recent drawings and paintings based on images from films and paintings of famous faces from music and cinema.

I am drawn to images in painting and photography that capture the moment; that utilizes lighting and colour to convey a mood or atmosphere. Painters whose work I admire include prominent realist painters like Edward Hopper, and Caravaggio for the dramatic lighting effects in their work and also contemporary figurative painters like Mary Jane Ansell, Malcolm Liepke, Steve Caldwell, Joe Simpson, Alyssa Monks and Laura Quinn Harris.

In painting portraits I enjoy the process of applying layers of paint until with a few subtle details and touches of the brush a likeness is achieved and I have captured the expression and something about the character of the person I am painting.

However subject matter need not be the most important aspect
of a painting, as a painter, my goal is to look past it. My artistic training emphasizes not looking at things as things but as a group of interlocking shapes and colors.  I am happy to be painting anything and everything.

Gary was a tremendous artist and had an incredible portfolio of work.

Gary Sadly passed away in early 2021 but his legacy will live on.

 

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