Drawing #33 Drawing

To view more of Rip's work please visit: & . Rip Matteson devoted his life to the world of art as a teacher, cartoonist, artist, and promoter of fine art. He prepared for this calling with studies in art and education at San Jose State University, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and the University of California Berkeley where he earned a Doctorate degree. Later he studied at the Scuola di Belle Arte in Rome and Parsons School of Design in New York. During his career he was awarded numerous awards for his artistic endeavors including the Phelan Award for Achievement in Art, the El Cerrito Memorial Award, recognition as an artist by the Carmel Arts Festival, and an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Blackburn College and afterward strengthened the art department at Laney College in Oakland. He was accepted by the Carmel Art Association in 1949 and served on its Board and was its President during the early 1960's. Although he began his artistic journey living a peripatetic life while getting his education and starting his art career, he was the first to say that, "the bohemian life of sacrifice and starvation is not a prerequisite to artistic success. An artist can find beauty without suffering... ." It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and Rip had an eye for beauty. This was particularly manifest in his work during his latter years in which he devoted most of his efforts to figurative painting of the female form. During this phase of his more than six decade career, he articulated the beauty he saw with a passion and joy that is evident in his work. It is an interesting side note that many of Rip's paintings were inscribed on the back of the canvases with quotations from renowned poets such as Robert Browning, William Yeats, and Ralph W. Emerson. In this way, Rip was a poet who employed a brush rather than a pen, but in any case, it was his way of sharing his view of truth and beauty.