Artist's Statement
The idea of painting is to make the invisible visible—and the only means we have to do this is the visible. As impossible as this sounds, I believe it to be the case.
Bonnard did it almost literally: the colors of the spectrum that reside in the air, in light, which are (relatively) invisible (seen occasionally in a rainbow), he made manifestly and abundantly visible in his paintings. He puts color where you don't see or expect any color, and you don't realize until he shows it to you that it was there all the time. It is one of the secret motives of nature.
Another is movement. Van Gogh intuited the secret movement in things, the chi, and made it visible for us. With Chardin it is possibly more mysterious: you don't know how or why life is present in his paintings; it just is. He imbued them with the mystery that is life.
Gregory Gillespie had this quality too—a kind of intensity—but he put his own crazy spin on it. It's serious, but it's playful.
Matisse said that the only light that matters is the light in the artist's brain. He was doing the same thing as Bonnard was—using color as the equivalent of light.
Some abstract painters—the ones who “abstract from”—notably Diebenkorn, Hodgkins, Gorky, and de Kooning, to name the first ones that come to mind—do succeed in making something visible invisible.
But for the most part, the painters who intrigue me are the ones who have confronted nature, stood in it and worked from it, and seen in it something they were able to give back to us in a visibly understandable form. Cézanne is the best example of this.
The further an artist goes in response to this problem—of making the visible invisible—the closer he comes to the motives of nature.
— Paul Matthews, 2/16/01
My purpose in painting is to give flesh to an idea—maybe I should say to a strongly felt idea. As Yeats put it, “You can’t know the truth; you can only embody it.” My teacher, Sydney Delevante, told a wonderful story about a first-grade kid who, when asked how he went about drawing, said, “I make a ‘think’ and draw a line around it.” That’s pretty much how I proceed, though I am always influenced by what happens. How can the painting be separate from the subject matter any more than the body can be separate from the spirit?
Some days I feel as if I could finish every unfinished painting in my studio; other days I feel too timid to touch anything, even to start. But I start anyway. Over and over again I’ve been given the lesson of fear and courage, of lack of confidence and faith: yesterday, as I got toward the end of my day working on Sam Elworthy’s head and began painting wet into wet—slightly heavier paint into wet but thinner paint—I discovered, for the hundredth or thousandth time, how easy and natural and right this is, wondering why I don’t always do it, and then, of course, I was too tired and my knees hurt too much to go on. So I left it to stiffen and dry. This is the lesson—or should be—that there’s nothing to fear: take the chance.
Self-Interview
Painting is a way of saying what can't be said any other way. Painting is a way of giving form to one's feelings. Painting, it turns out, is about responsibility in its original form—in the sense that it is a response to the visible world. Painting is my way of getting even with the world and making love to it at the same time. I paint to deserve to live. And—to quote my old friend Marty Washburn—painting is "my way of being with people."
Its beauty, of course. In my pursuit of natural beauty, I am always confounded, because whatever I have done, or attempted, nature always presents me with something more beautiful—as if to mock me.
Partly it's that my training has all been drawing and painting from the nude model, but it is my preference too. The human form, nude, in all its variations, is at its most mysterious, fascinating, and beautiful.
Woman defies discovery.
In this or any century.
Since her complete disrobery.
Reveals but denser mystery.
It's also more than likely that my extremely puritan religious upbringing, with its formative years of deprivation, has enhanced, or exacerbated (depending on your viewpoint), my obsession with sex.
Yes. Breasts are not only sexual objects to me: they are the loving warmth and heart of a woman—forgiving, comforting, consoling, and life-affirming.
— Paul Matthews, 9/26/06
Fear and Courage
Some days I feel as if I could finish every unfinished painting in my studio—some days I feel too timid to touch anything, even to start. (But I start anyway.) Over and over again I've been given the lesson of fear and courage, of lack of confidence and faith: yesterday, as I got towards the end of my day working on Sam Elworthy's head and began painting wet into wet, slightly heavier paint into wet but thinner paint, and discovered (for the hundredth? thousandth time) how easy and natural and right this was, wondering why I don't always do it... and then, of course, I was too tired and my knees hurt too much to go on.
So I left it to stiffen and dry. This is the lesson—or should be—that there's nothing to fear: take the chance.
— Paul Matthews, 2007
Resume
Education
- 1957–60 — Cooper Union Art School, NYC (highest achievement prize)
- 1951–54 — Kenyon College, Ohio
- 1946–51 — South Kent School, Connecticut
- 1955–57 — U.S. Army
- Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie, Trenton, NJ, 2011
- NJ State Museum, Trenton, NJ, 2003
- Philadelphia Art Alliance, 2000
- Atea Ring Gallery, Westport, NY, 1990, '91, '93, '95, '96, '98, '99, '01, '04, '09
- Riverrun Gallery, Lambertville, NJ, 1994, '96, '98, '01
- Karl Stirner Gallery, Easton, PA, 1984
- Penn State University, State College, PA, 1981
- Swanson Gallery, High Bridge, NJ, 1980
- Gill/St. Bernard's School, Bernardsville, NJ, 1978
- Albany Junior College, Albany, NY, 1977
- Viridian Gallery, NYC, 1977
- Nexus Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 1976
- Stover Mill, Erwinna, PA, 1968, '72, '80, '84
- Zabriskie Gallery, NYC, 1964, '66
- Genest Gallery, Lambertville, NJ, 1991
- University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, 1996
- Lake Placid Center for the Arts, NY, 1980
- Bucks County Art Center, PA, 1985
- The Gallery at the State Theater, Easton, PA, 1991
- SUNY Plattsburgh, NY, 1997
- Walter Wickiser, NY, 2003
- NJ State Museum, Trenton, 2001
- National Academy of Design, NY, 2000
- Philadelphia Sketch Club, 2000 (First Award), 2001, 2003 (First Award)
- Viridian Gallery, NY, 1999
- Atea Ring Gallery, Westport, NY, 1994, '03, '04, '07
- The Ellarslie Open (Trenton City Museum), 1992, 1999 (Best of Show), '00, '02 (Best of Show), '04, '05
- Easton Arts Conservatory, PA, 1987
- Lake Placid Center for the Arts, 1987
- Coryell Gallery, Lambertville, NJ, 1983–99
- Phillips Mill, Solebury, PA, 1977–80, '82–'86, '88, '05
- Gallery K, Washington, DC, 1977
- Nexus Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 1976, '83
- Hunterdon Art Center, Clinton, NJ, 1974, '75, '87, '01
- SUNY at Albany, NY, 1974
- Philadelphia Art Alliance, PA, 1976, '83
- Zabriskie Gallery, NY, 1965
- MOMA Art Lending Program, 1964–65
- Parke-Bernet, NYC, 1964
- "Life on a String", shown Chicago Film Festival, 1973
- Canadian War Museum, Ottawa, Canada
- Birkenhead Gallery, Liverpool, England
- Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, NY
- Trenton City Museum at Ellarslie, Trenton, NY
- Yeshiva University Museum, NYC
- Russell Banks, NY
- Henry & Kathleen Chalfant, NYC
- Helen Craft, Rockville, MD
- Mr. & Mrs. J.A. Frank, NYC
- Mr. & Mrs. Peter Haje, NYC
- John Heffernan, NYC
- Julie Hotton, NYC
- Mr. & Mrs. Schuyler Jackson, VT
- Leon Kirchner, NY
- Reuben Nakian, NYC
- G.B. Ollinger, North Port, FL
- Charles Ramsburg, NYC
- John Rawlings, NYC
- Elaine Restifo, Lambertville, NJ
- Karl Stirner, Easton, PA
- Mr. & Mrs. Robert Worth, NYC
and many others.
Early Life & Education
Paul Matthews went to Kenyon College in Ohio. He began his study of art at the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City. While at the Cooper Union School, he was awarded the school's highest achievement award.
Matthew's career in the Adirondacks began when he met his wife, Leila. Their summer house in Keene was built in 1923 by his wife's grandfather, who intended for the second home to be an escape from the city life in New York. Second home owners are classic examples of outsiders in the Adirondacks: they are not true residents. Currently, Matthews spends the summers in the Adirondacks in his Keene house, though he returns home in the off-season to his permanent dwelling and studio in New Jersey. Matthews is a landscape artist who draws his inspiration from scenes in the Adirondacks. He has remarked that “everything looks so beautiful. It's like there's been an opening, and you can see right through it. . . And we take it all for granted” (Adirondack Explorer).
According to Atea Ring, gallery owner of the Atea Ring Gallery in Westport, NY, Matthews has a way of portraying the Adirondacks that no one else can: “He sees it, he feels it, and has the ability to paint it” (Adirondack Explorer). Matthews has many exhibits at the Atea Ring Gallery in Wesport.
His work has also been shown at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts and the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. He has been called one of the best-known contemporary artists in the Adirondacks (Adirondack Explorer). Unlike the paintings of many landscape painters, the sky dominates Matthew's paintings. He is fascinated and drawn in by the clouds he observes in the Adirondacks. His paintings are oriented toward the sky, symbolically depicting heaven. The dramatization of the clouds creates a sense of awe that surely Matthews feels himself when he is in the Adirondacks. They are also foreboding, as the clouds seem to allude to oncoming storms. As an outsider, Matthews notices the vast openness of the sky in the Adirondacks, and this is what he chooses to paint.
Thoughts on Painting
Painting is a way of saying what can't be said any other way. Painting is a way of giving form to one's feelings. Painting, it turns out, is about responsibility in its original form—in the sense that it is a response to the visible world. It's my way of getting even with the world and making love to it at the same time. I paint to deserve to live. And—to quote my old friend Marty Washburn—painting is “my way of being with people.”
— Paul Matthews, 9/26/06