A Gen X childhood; household objects and patterns.

“The 70s were not all tie-dye and flares. My grandparents houses were furnished in the 50s and 60s, the sideboard displayed the floral teacups and saucers of their parents’ generation. The op shops that I explored sold fur coats, fox head stoles, pill box hats and the long satin gloves worn to dances.The new items at home, the bright orange Crock Pot and other kitchen classics were only highlights against this muted backdrop.”

The Autumn toned accessories that might have been have been discarded in the late 80s, are now vintage treasures. Can painting bring these vanishing artifacts back to the present, recycling the colors and textures in contemporary work? 

The everyday objects that make up our lives come and go mostly unmissed and unmourned—until we see them magnified in these images. Matthews carefully arranges household items as if they were precious objects in a seventeenth-century still-life. Orange plastic, green vases, and bright, big-patterned materials evoke a life fast falling off the cliff of memory. In these works, Matthews takes these objects—gone or gathering dust, and pulls them into the present.