About Me:

I'm Matt Brown, I'm a full-time artist, and this is my on-line showcase.

I get a wide range of visitor passing through, so whether you're an art lover, a gallery owner, designer, collector, or student then there should be something for you here. And I always love to hear your thoughts, whatever they are, so do email me if you feel the urge.

So I guess I should tell you a little about myself…

Let's see… I play the violin. I live by the sea, on the Isle of Man (which is a beautiful little island in the middle of the Irish Sea). I cook a mean pasta bake. I have a wonderful wife (who's a piano teacher). We grow our own vegetables and fruit at our allotment (which can be at once a source of great joy and also heartache). I read up on physics, like talking about ethics and spend a lot of time sitting on rocks, thinking.

Getting started:

I've been a professional artist since 1997. I have been producing fine art full-time since 2005. At Lough House Animation Studios I gained a qualification in animation, where I worked as a 2D animator, a 3D animator and acquired experience in several other areas of the production cycle.

After that I struck out on my own and for a time, earned much of my living through graphic and web design. Being my own boss felt great, even though it was much more difficult than I had anticipated, and my loftier dreams of art and animation were sadly (to begin with) consigned to my spare time.

Then the internet began to mature.

Soon, it wasn't just the computer boffins who were connected to the web - it was everyone. Even techno-phobes were beginning to do the odd bit of on-line shopping for those hard-to-get items. Importantly for me, art fell into this category.

The internet was the spark that set my career as an artist alight. It provided me with a break, a chance to connect to those people with the same aesthetic sensibilities as my own.

And that's the key. It's about the power of reach the internet possesses. Where once I could exhibit periodically, and in just one location at a time, now I have several hundred micro-galleries dotted across the globe. In homes, in offices, in scientific institutes…

My virtual gallery, my weblog and the art that's already out there hanging on walls are essential elements connecting me with a collector-base large enough to sustain my career.

Technology and art have always been closely entwined. Often they provide the artist with the limits within which he must work; at other times, they set him free.

Digital Painting:

As you will see from my portfolio, most of my works are digital paintings. Digital painting is similar to traditional painting except instead of using pigment, the artist paints with light. Painting with light is fantastic. As with any exciting new tool, it offers up whole universes of discovery for the artist to explore.

But it's more than just that. I find digital painting to be a very fluid medium. Ideas can be expressed quickly and accurately – without having to wait for paint to dry – which often gives the impression that the virtual canvas is simply an extension of the imagination.

In this way, digital art feels a lot like playing a musical instrument. It allows to you improvise; to riff on a theme; to express what you are feeling right at that moment. And just as music is very much an abstract art form, so too I am drawn toward abstract compositions whenever I paint.

Abstract Forms:

Since my days as an animator, I've been fascinated by three facets of nature – light, movement and texture. The forms I find most beautiful are those that display these three facets.

From a scientific standpoint, these can all be explained by the mathematical laws that govern everything. But what fascinated me was how such relatively simple rules could create such an endless variety of complex and beautiful forms. How was this possible?

I first asked this question as an animator, when having to recreate the outside world, object by object, in a 3D virtual environment, then bringing it to life frame by frame. My fascination has never ceased. Trying to get to the bottom of this puzzle is what has lead me, step by step, toward abstract art.

Now, when creating abstract art, I am trying to tap into and understand those same laws of nature. The same laws that govern equally the swirl in a cup of coffee and the swirl of a galaxy. The laws that, over millennia, give rise to the mottled surface of a lichen-encrusted rock.

This underlying pattern to everything seems always to be abstract: the symmetry of a flower head, the apparent randomness of air currents shaping the path of a bird. It's all one huge mystery to me. But I know there's an underlying explanation. A meaning. For me, this is the what abstract art is.

This is why one person might see my work and say "Hey, that looks like an underwater coral reef," whilst someone else might say "I was thinking it was sunlight shining through leaves", and so on. On the front page of my website I introduce my work with the words:

When the human mind is confronted by something alien, our imagination is tickled by our need to find patterns. A face in the moon, an archer in the heavens. With abstract art, these fleeting glimpses offer us the chance to explore entire worlds within our minds.

Future Artistic Development:

When I began producing fine art, I started out creating studies of nature: feathers, leaves, rocks, shells. Then I moved on to creating wholly abstract pictures using the principals I had observed. So what are my intentions for the future?

Well, at the moment, there are three avenues I wish to develop:

(a). Large-format abstract works:
I see this collection of pieces as the next stage in the development of my abstract style. Each digital painting is intended to be rendered as a seven or eight-foot wide giclée, mounted over a solid hardwood block.

Each piece is wholly abstract, and attempts to create the impression of a complex, three dimensional abstract space – a self-contained, mini universe.

Because of their size, each piece is more detailed than pictures in my previous project ("A Play on Light"), offering greater complexity in terms of form, texture, and overall scope. As I develop my style ever further, I am able to explore these abstract 'scapes with evermore confidence.

I call this project "Toy Universe".

(b). Pictures with one recognisable form in an otherwise abstract environment:
I conducted a recent experiment, by including a single, recognisable form or object in my otherwise abstract canvas. I found that doing so created a kind of "visual anchor". In other words: if I inserted a beetle, for example, then the surrounded abstract shapes seemed to coalesce in the mind's eye to form leaves and earth and undergrowth.

By including a recognisable form, I am able to play with our mind's need to interpret abstract shapes in a meaningful way. In doing so, our imaginations create an environment and context for the lone character to inhabit.

It's something I find intriguing, and intend to develop, in order to further understand the relationship between a painting and the viewer's mind.

I call this project "Mythopoeia", and so far, I have created several pieces in this way – each of which have been strongly influenced by myth or folklore. This seems fitting, seeing as folklore and myth arise out of the very same human need to give meaning to our surroundings – to those facets of nature that seem abstract and inexplicable.

(c). Selected Figurative works:
Taking the style I have developed creating abstract art, I have recently begun applying it to themes and subjects of a more figurative nature. This was initially sparked by my ongoing Mythopoeia collection, but has now begun to take an independent path of development. Pieces come in a variety of sizes, and often explore mythical or archetypal scenarios and characters.

Having spent the last few years studying the abstract textures and patterns of nature, it now gives me great pleasure to be able to apply these techniques to figurative settings. Whilst abstract art remains my primary focus, I find these smaller, figurative works to be a lot of fun.