Sage Elephant #P-S-00276 Drawing

Matt Woods is a contemporary painter. His figurative and narrative works attempt to harness his own stream of consciousness towards images that reveal simple, universal stories of adversity and perseverance. In his abstract works, he sees himself as an archeologist of paint and process, repeatedly adding and subtracting layers to a variety of surfaces, hunting for visual splendor and order in the frantic discord. His work balances soft, careful mark making, often combined with violent, destructive processes, to achieve a result which mirrors his view that life is a marriage of exaltation and pain. The canvas materials Matt chooses are often reclaimed pieces of wood from structures that come with their own embedded histories, like an old, well-used easel found at a yard sale, or an abandoned skateboard ramp found in the middle of the desert. These ghosts that accompany the materials call out to have their stories influence the marks made by the artist, adding further buried layers of interest and complexity to the work.