Matthew Beall

Education and activities

Biography

Matthew Beall
Artist Statement

Matthew Beall is an American painter who has lived in Germany since 2000. His large paintings reflect an ongoing exploration of both abstracted landscape and color. Emotional and gestural his work suggests a world that exists between the bright neon lights of California and the shadows of Germany.

Born in 1962 in California, essentially self-taught as an artist, Beall worked for many years creating custom designs for the steel exterior of automobiles. He has had numerous group and solo exhibitions of his paintings in both Europe and the United States. His work is in many important private collections.

In his recent work partial faces and enigmatic eyes emerge from gorgeous and sensuous fields of color. Mysterious and moody these figurative elements function as portals, or windows, into what appears to be a mystical and primal landscape. These paintings are large and this scale creates an alternate world to enter. This is a world that references numerous art historical moments as it suggests a place that is solitary, unknown and, ultimately, lonely. The paintings are not so much about individual identity as they are about a rapidly altering collective identity that forms as physical and cultural boundaries change and often dissolve.

Beall has stated that for him painting is a deeply intuitive process and not readily accessible by words. And, indeed, particularly in his recent paintings, there is a suggestion of the physical world dissolving into a shimmering aura that lies just beyond our last thought or breath. The paintings are, as much art is, an articulation of longing. A longing for a place both remembered and not yet discovered.

Beall’s vision, however, is not a romantic or pastoral one; rather it alludes to colliding cultures and an attempt to find solace in the seeming permanence of art history and the past. In ways this work combines this quest with the bright, fast-moving optimism that marked the contemporary California culture in which the artist lived for many years.

Beall`s landscape is a provocative and suggestive one that speaks poignantly to a world that is increasingly open-ended and fluid. It is a place that knows no dominion and is continually being redefined.

Exhibitions

Group show
Brenda Taylor Gallery
New York City
2008

Solo Exhibition
Ott Cucina
Neu Ulm, Germany
2007

Art Ireland
Dublin, Ireland
2006

Group Exibition
Marziart Internationale Galerie
Hamburg Germany
April-May 2006

Solo Exhibition
University of Ulm
Germany
2005

Numerous online exhibitions.

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