Matthew Thorson Bio/Portfolio Submission for MuralLove

Artist Bio:

Through his painting, Matthew Thorson breathes energy into dim spaces felt so deeply in life but rarely seen on canvas.

A native New Mexican, Thorson professes a passion for the night’s caress upon the infinite vistas of sky and earth using both, gouache and oil paint, to build upon the ideas of American Realism, Impressionism and Baroque era artwork.

Capturing moments both fluid and still, Thorson is a champion of those times when the world around us becomes something strange and curious as the chains of imagination are broken.

Whether it’s the spaceship of warm, twinkling lights spread across the mesa, magenta clouds pressed up against the deep blue and black hues of a starry sky, or the eerie red glow of radio towers atop the Sandia Mountains as they rise over adobe homes that dot the valley — Thorson replicates an ethereal world seldom found beneath a brush.

Matthew Thorson graduated from the University of New Mexico in 2012 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts and has since been involved in various group shows including the Harwood Art Center’s inaugural community-supported art program, Harvest, working alongside Albuquerque artists such as Lea Anderson, Larry Bob Phillips, Valerie Roybal, and others.

While acknowledging art’s general neglect of the nighttime through his work, Thorson focuses on the twilight to fill a larger chasm — one that goes beyond the canvas and tugs at our deepest anxieties and illuminates shadows of the mind.

Without the glaring forms of day, The night prods us to look within ourselves and Thorson’s talents feed that voyage, serving as a doorway into which we are given a genuine moment of introspection that then builds upon itself in ways that are scary, beautiful, jarring and enlightening.

As we delve into the unknown, we become more free, and while we are all bound by something, the nocturnes of Matthew Thorson hand us the key.