Artist Statement
My name is Matthew King. I am an artist. I am a humanist.
By humanist, I mean that I am fascinated with humanity, and I believe that every person is deserving of respect, compassion and understanding. We are such complex creatures with deeply rooted biological motivations and instincts. When we try to strip away the presumptions and judgments that cultures have created about who we are as a people or what we’re supposed to be, it becomes more evident that we are merely animals. Certainly, we are the most sophisticated animals on the planet, but we are animals still. Our paleolithic brains and bodies are struggling to cope with the cultures and technologies we have created. Since humanity’s beginning, lifetime after lifetime, individuals have been creating and building upon their predecessors’ ideas and methods of molding the earth in ways to improve the lives of themselves and those around them. Right here, right now is the greatest, most fascinating, most privileged time and place to be alive. “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” (Sir Isaac Newton)
With my drawings and paintings, I wish to celebrate humanity’s beauty, and to the best of my ability follow in the traditions of classical art. I am in awe of history’s masters such as Caravaggio, Durer, and Sargent; and modern masters such as Maria Kreyn, Cesar Santos, and Juliette Aristides provide so much inspiration and impetus to improve my skills.
I also wish to create a dialogue about our relationships with the institutions that surround us. Often, we take for granted the cultures and institutions into which we are imbedded without reasonably considering their efficacy or how they affect individuals or masses. We are the inheritors of our culture, as has been every generation, and while we can clearly see the mistakes of history, we tend to overlook the harms we inflict on people via moral panic, biases, prejudices, and the presumptions of politically powerful individuals to know what is best for the rest of us. As an artist, I wish to highlight the misguided efforts to dictate who and what we are. Specifically, I wish to criticize governmental abuses, overreaches, and violations of human and civil rights. Governments and societal norms have a dangerous tendency to dehumanize unpopular groups of people. In the United States, the land of the free, we have 4% of the world’s population, yet we incarcerate 25% of all the prisoners in the world. We live in one of the greatest societies that has ever existed, but it is deeply flawed because it is governed by humans. I wish for my art to challenge people’s pre-conceived notions and illuminate the problems that are often overlooked. We can improve what we have and build something greater.
King is available for portraits, murals, and other commissions. For prices and availability of original works please contact: