Project Description
Vincent Matthews
Artist
Art Biography
He loves to sketch outdoors from life; especially places such as Dungeness and the area around Rye that inspire him

Vincent has been drawing from a very young age and due to his deafness, was doing so before he could talk properly. He went to art college in his teens and then became an interior designer, working in the Sibyl Colefax and John Fowler design studio for many years; designing and detailing interiors of architecture on the drawing board. Later in life, after rediscovering his art passion and doing various life painting courses, he went on to study contemporary fine art at CityLit, whilst working as lead design consultant on a big project. This changed his life and he gave up his job, to focus more time on his fine art practice and did some short courses on etching at Camberwell Art College.
Drawing features very strongly in all of Vincent’s art work. He loves to sketch outdoors from life; especially places such as Dungeness and the area around Rye that inspire him. He then uses this information to produce his etchings with aquatint, intaglio engraving and big Indian ink drawings, playing with marks and interpreting what he sees, as well as using his memory and feelings of sketching on location. He much prefers to work this way rather than using photographs because he feels that he experiences and sees the subject matter much more, using this approach.
Vincent firmly believes in respecting the character of each medium and likes to play with a process of figurative abstraction; leaving areas of white and focusing on the elements that interest him the most, as well as pairing back the drawing with suggestive shapes in the background in his landscapes; to leave something for the viewer’s imagination and interaction with the work, as well as adding depth to the pictures. The composition becomes incredibly important with this “minimal” approach. He often prefers black and white for his drawings and etchings, feeling that colour can be distracting in these pictures, when it is really about the drawing and it helps to depict the grittiness, as well as eeriness of the bleak landscapes that often feature in his work.