Tom Matousek

Gallery

My art is made up of hard lines and bold geometric figures, yet my paintings maintain a human, organic quality. Every detail of a piece is planned before I pick up a brush. As a painter of faces, this begins with determining the subject’s essence. Key features are highlighted to make each subject instantly recognizable, such as Johnny Cash’s snarl, along with the shapes that hide in the shadows of each person’s face. At first glance, the viewer will be drawn to the blocks and colors, but my art is really about light value. I paint with small brushes and oil paints, which look like water colors or stained glass when I’m finished. Up close, the individual shapes are all that can be seen, with their prismatic, shattered glass quality. But when viewed from a distance, the faces are no longer hidden by the rough, asymmetrical rhombuses and rectangles, and can be seen more clearly.