Matthew Cherry
Finish this sentence. People should support art because … On a more serious note and simply put; people should support art because art has value….it matters.
I am not saying this for those who think in terms of the almighty $ or art as an investment. The value of art is often immeasurable and its importance as individual to the viewer as is the individual him or herself. It is we who bring meaning to work and keep it a living force. It is we who add value. I like to think in terms of “presence”. If a piece of art can bring me back to look at it again and again…it has a presence…a life force. But that which feeds me…may not feed you. It’s a very intimate and unique experience, sometimes cerebral, off-times visceral, and often purely emotional. I am talking in terms of improving one’s life, providing meaning, provoking questions that may be unanswerable, providing respite from the chaos and the day-to-day grind. It can reside with us even after we are no longer in front of it. It pokes and probes into our psyche and permeates into our thoughts which then impact our present. It can lull us to a blissful sweetness and blend us up to a frothy
fervor...now that is power!
What are you working on right now? He a d s , b u s t s a n d b o d y portraits…but not in a traditional sense. I actually think I am painting objects or rather creating object paintings. They depict the human form and unique individual heads and busts and use the guise of portraiture but in the end they are objects of scrutiny and observation that allow me to layer colors versus being psychological portraits. My projects involve the depiction of individuals in frontal stances and heavily rely on the collaboration or participation of random people I meet on the streets or connect with via social media.
Bryan - Budd Lake, NJ - Facebook MO series 24" x 24" oil on canvas
MO – (heads) documenting people w mohawks I started this series having just cut my hair into a mohawk as a way to identify with my two sons; one who had left home for college and one just about to. It was in defiance of my having to let them go; my little rebellion of becoming an empty nester, however slow the process. I connected this transitional phase of my sons growing up and declaring their manhood or adulthood or their independence to a moment in my childhood when my older brother died in a car accident at the age of 19 (I was 15). Five days before his death, he cut his hair in a mohawk style which completely shocked my parents and the small town where we lived in north eastern Arizona. The shock of his "extreme" hairstyle now seems a ridiculous and casual preface to the shock of his death we experienced just a few days later…a kind of "pre-echo". ”Remember when Kevin cut his hair in a Mohawk”…is now always followed by the silent recognition of his violent death just a few days later. They are forever synonymous in my recollection. And yet, I had never given his haircut much thought since then until my sons cut their hair in the form of a mohawk. Now I see his face everywhere nearly 30 years later in the occasional face of someone sportin' a mohawk on the streets...a reminder of him or lack thereof in my immediate presence. Its arresting to see an unfamiliar face become recognizable and familiar and intimate though foreign. Its startling how time
bends...and pain and joy re-surfaces and wraps the past to the immediate present. Its surreal how a memory can place you back into a location though miles away.
www.poetsandartists.com
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