Matt Blackwell

*Hot Turkey Sandwich* (2019) oil on canvas, 40” x 30” - self portrait, shot on studio wall

Matt Blackwell’s vibrant mixed media paintings burst with color, texture, and reverberations of the improvisatory bang of their creation. Blackwell is a fearless and prolific artist. His work, which is narrative and rooted in Americana, is wicked quirky, and floridly imaginative. In it, we see the artist’s flair for the uncanny, an irreverent wit, and a keen appreciation for the myriad absurdities of being, but Blackwell’s empathy for his often eccentric protagonists is always apparent. Though some pieces are inspired by the music of singer/songwriters like Bob Dylan, John Prine, and Lucinda Williams, or by scenes from everyday reality, in Blackwell’s America, delirious and carnivalesque inversions of order occur on the regular. Bears stand upright and escort glamorous women to undisclosed locations, gleefully maniacal, Day-of-the-Dead-looking characters speed their pink cartoon of a car around the feet of a great colossus of a moose (whose antlers seem light and airy, like fairy wings), as it stands motionless amid a crowd of random and assorted human and supernatural beings gathered in a forest clearing. As critic David Brody puts it, "Blackwell’s figures are both fantastic projections of psychic roles and notes on everyday weirdness. . . [his] fondness for the Twilight Zone is in cahoots with the ambiguity of his narratives.” Place is important, with most of Blackwell’s imagery drawn from places that meaningfully intersect with his own biography: Maine, upstate New York, and New Mexico. Artists Fintan Boyle and Jennie Nichols describe Blackwell as “something of a regionalist chronicler. As such, the paintings are a form of notation or witnessing. But if the footing is in regionalism there is also a Hogarthian cocked eye on the lookout for the right scene that will give us regionalism’s crusty experience as a cautionary lesson for the wider world.”

Matt Blackwell holds a BFA from Portland School of Art (now Maine College of Art)(1977) and an MFA from University of North Carolina (1988), where he received the Holderness Fellowship for Excellence. In 1980, he was the recipient of the Marguerite Zorach scholarship in painting to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and in 2015 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work is in the permanent collections of the Portland Museum of Art (see the aforementioned Moose there), the Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), and the Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, GA), as well as many private collections.

EDUCATION

M.F.A. University of North Carolina, 1988
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, 1980
B.F.A. Portland School of Art, 1977

AWARDS

2015 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
2006 Purchase Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters

GUEST LECTURES

2016 Portland Museum of Art
Visiting Artist, Pennsylvania Academy of Art
2012 “What Only Paint Can Do” Panel Discussion Triangle Arts
2008 Visiting Artist, Brandeis University, Waltham, Ma.
2007 School of Art and Design, SUNY, Purchase, N.Y.
2006 School of Visual Arts, New York, N.Y.
2005 Parsons School of Design, New York, N.Y.
2004 Parsons School of Design, New York, N.Y.

RESIDENCIES

2015 Vermont Studio School, Johnson Vt.
2009 Artist in Residence, Savannah College of Art and Design,
Savannah, Ga. .
2007 Alumni Monotype Workshop, Maine College of Art, Portland, Me.
2004-2005 Triangle Artist Residency, Brooklyn, NY
2002 Triangle Arts Workshop, Brooklyn, N.Y.
2001 Yaddo Artist’s Residency, Saratoga Springs, N.Y.
Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vt.
2000 Sculpture Space, Utica, N.Y.

SOLO AND TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS

2016 Southwest by Northeast Edward Thorp Gallery, New York
John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY
Une Certaine Vision de l’Amérique, H Gallery, Paris, France
2014 Recent Work, John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY
2013 Picklelilly, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York
Matt Blackwell, Valentine Gallery Ridgewood Queens
2012 Matt Blackwell and Greg Eltringham: Selections, Triangle Arts Brooklyn
Facetime: Matt Blackwell and John Byum, Parker’s Box, Brooklyn
2011 Tour and Trance, Edward Thorp Gallery
2011 Pine-ing, Forge Gallery, Milford, Pa.
2010 Horsepower, Savanah College of Art and Design Atlanta, Ga. with Greg Eltringham
2009-10 WorldWiDetour , ArtLot, Brooklyn, with John Bjerklie
2009 Baked and Raw, SCAD, Savannah, Ga.
2008 Whoop ‘em up Cindy, Edward Thorp Gallery
2007 Over Yonder in the Minor Key: Recent Paintings, Edward Thorp Gallery
2005 Et in Arcadia Ego, Edward Thorp Gallery
2001 Ghost Catcher, Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, N.Y. with Patrick O’Hare

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Camille Bardin, “H Gallery: Matt Blackwell on the Road”, Toute la Culture.com November 12, 2016
David Brody, Bear Men in the Twilight Zone: Matthew Blackwell at Edward Thorp Artcritical, November 28, 2013
Daniel Kany, “PMA Biennial Overlooks Paintings But Otherwise Excels”, Portland Press Herald, October 13, 2013
Nicholas Schroeder, “Ruminations Inspired by the PMA Biennial, The Phoenix, October 14, 2013.
Edgar Allen Beem, “The Art Forecast: The Portland Museum of Art Biennial is a Piece of Work”, Nov 8, 2013.
Sarah Wilco, “Everything is a Self-Portrait” Hyperallergic.com, December 9, 2011
Karen Wilkin, “At the Galleries” Hudson Review, Winter 2011-12
Stephen Maine, “Matthew Blackwell” Art in America, March 2008, 175
Jane Harris. “Matt Blackwell: Over Yonder in the Minor Key”, Time Out NY, September 27, 2007
Grace Glueck, “Matt Blackwell”, New York Times, April 1, 2005
Holland Cotter, “Sampling Brooklyn, Keeper of Eclectic Flames”, New York Times, January 23, 2004

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2017 Bête Noire, FiveMyles, Brooklyn, New York, curated by Mario Naves
2016 Modern Menagerie, Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine
Anomaly 547 W. 27th St Gallery, New York
Spaced, Edward Thorp Gallery
2015 Summer Group Exhibition, Edward Thorp Gallery
Bushwick Open Studio, Brooklyn, NY
2014 Summer Exhibition, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York
2013 Piece Work, Maine Biennial, Portland Museum of Art , Portland Maine
“north of my brain south of my ass” Studio 10, Brooklyn, NY
Season Review: Selected Artists, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York
Project Room with Henri Michaux: Selected Works, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York
2012 About Time, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York
B19, Long Island University, Brooklyn , New York
Outpost, E.B. White Gallery, Butler Community College, El Dorado, Kansas
What Only Paint Can Do, Triangle Arts, Brooklyn
2011 A Sense of Place, Hartwick College, Oneota, N.Y.
2010 Ten Years Hunting, Parker’s Box, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Four Artists, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, N.Y.
Why Be Anywhere Else, Belgrade National Gallery, Belgrade Serbia (Traveled Montenegro and Serbia)
2009-10 About Face, Edward Thorp Gallery, N. Y.
2009 Put it on Paper, Edward Thorp Gallery, N.Y.
2008 From Brooklyn with Love, Parker’s Box, Brooklyn, N.Y.
New Work by Gallery Artists, Edward Thorp Gallery
2007 Summer Group Show, Edward Thorp Gallery
Group Show, Annie Gentils Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
2006 Invitational Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, N.Y.
Ten New Paintings, Parker’s Box, Brooklyn, N.Y.
2005 Flavor Intensive: Five Sculptors, Triangle, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Summer Sustenance, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, N.Y.
2004 Group Exhibition, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, N.Y.
Greetings from New York, Edward Thorp Gallery, New York, NY
Curator’s Intuition, Maine College of Art, Portland, Me.
Enriched Parker’s Box, Brooklyn, NY
2003 Artists Choose Artists, Courthouse Gallery, Lake George, N.Y.
2002 Made in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Rail Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
2001 Picture This, Flipside Gallery, Brooklyn, N.Y.
2000 Resident Group Show Sculpture Space, Utica, NY
Trailer, Theresa Luisotti, Los Angeles,Ca.
Group Show, Helix Gallery, Santa Fe, N.M.