Click an Image below to Enlarge
When Matthew Kyme was a toddler he loved drawing so much his mother bought him an artist-style chalk-board easel and he would spend hours creating images. By eight he was astounding everyone with his capacity to sit in the backyard for hours and perfectly replicate a tree. At school he was the “good drawer” the other kids went to, and in first year of a TAFE Diploma of Visual Art in Painting, his lecturer said he had such a “real gift” he should skip second year and go straight to university.
He did just that, and now at 25, Kyme is impressing both critics and art lovers with an astonishing array of work, particularly meticulous portraits and abstract landscapes.
The Black & White Series underlines his talent – media-based pieces mixing powerful image with subtle perception. “It’s all in the posing,” he says. “The eyes say a lot, looking to the left or right, indicating reflection, longing, or perhaps desperation.”
These images also figure in his landscapes, sweeping vistas that contain just about, well, anything. He sides with US abstract artist Robert Motherwell who said the artist should not have to explain. Kyme does not follow a particular movement, but his influences include Hockney, Maas, Uglow and Warhol.
Matthew Kyme was born in New Zealand in 1980, but shortly after, his Australian-born mother returned to her homeland and he was brought up in Melbourne.
He added a Diploma of Education in 2003 and finds it a joy teaching young talent everything from Indigenous Art to Post Modernism, while producing work that has won awards and featured in group and solo exhibitions.
He looks to the day when his talent will allow him to leave the classroom and create full-time. It won’t be long.
Copyright © 2008 Art Nomad. All rights reserved. Click here to view copyright statement