Figure 3 2016 Drawing

Matthew Alfonso Durante emerged from the Wisconsin woodlands with a desire to do art. As a young man he studied computer science and worked with computer animation in Minneapolis, but art eventually drew him west. He learned his fundamentals at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Art, and graduated the full-time program in 2011. He continued exploring his dual interests, the California landscape and the figure, when an opportunity arose to attend the New York Academy of Art. Matthew earned his M.F.A. in 2017. Matthew is pursuing a sense of vitality and dynamism in human flesh and the natural landscape.