The son of a portrait artist, Matt began drawing and traveling to art shows with his father as a child where he grew up in southern Connecticut. With an educational background in engineering and software design, he moved through roles as an engineer, designer, and educator while cultivating a studio practice in painting. Along the way, he studied painting and drawing at the Cambridge Center Studio School, the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt), and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.
Matt currently maintains a studio in Somerville, Massachusetts where he is an active member of a vibrant arts community. He is the founder and first president of Somerville Open Studios, a non-profit organization that gives established and emerging artists a chance to show and sell work through an annual citywide program and related events. His work has been exhibited in a variety of solo and group shows in the Boston area and nationally, and is currently represented by the Four Eleven Gallery in Provincetown, MA. Matt lives with his wife Carol Trager in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Statement
My paintings and collages explore landscapes, both real and imagined, where abstraction and memory meet. Through the land, sea, and shifting light, I reflect on our connection to nature and how time quietly unfolds through changing seasons. Images emerge through the act of painting itself where process becomes a form of inquiry, and shapes and colors evolve into landscapes that feel at once familiar and dreamlike. The resulting works are intended less as depictions of specific places than they are as meditations on perception and memory of a place and time that is both personal and universal.
Hear Matt talk about his work in a 2012 interview at SCAT TV. View the video >>