I consider both art and surfing wonderful problems to have and stopped trying to quit either of them years ago.
Growing up surfing the California coast, hunting the elusive “secret” spot, memorizing entries from Bank Wright’s classic Surfing California, the diverse beauty of this state’s coastline has always captivated me, and continues to inspire my artwork to this day.
I’m currently residing on the beautifully remote Humboldt coast of Northern California with my wife and three kids. We dig it here. Beaches, forests, rocks, rivers and all that.
I graduated from Humboldt State University in 1998 with a major in Studio Art and minor in Philosophy. Good grief. I’ve never had a proper full time job though I’m pretty sure I applied for one once. I’ve always chosen instead to avoid such time-traps in order to remain focused on my art, which has been shown and published in various periodicals worldwide, including The Surfer’s Journal (Vol. 17, #3).
Exploration. I tend to work in series, where each one contains a concept at its core that I wanted to visually explore. Sometimes they overlap and spill into each other, as they should. Life is unlimited, there is always more to learn and find and wonder about. Just like travelling an unfamiliar stretch of coastline, always curious about what lies around the next bend, so it is with my art.
So it’s appropriate that by far the longest running thread in my visual explorations has been the California coast. The moods, topographies, geologies, and our interaction with it all is varied enough to inspire several lifetimes of art. I’m doing all that I can with the short time I have left.
Aside from these coastal explorations, I’ve also been enjoying painting performances with live musicians lately, exploring the possibilities and limitations of creating spontaneous art as an extension of the music itself.
Other subjects of recent exploration have ranged from simple poetic subtleties of water to the varied complexities of mathematical expressions of waves through rhythms, cycles, and vibrations.
Thank you for visiting my site, I hope you enjoy your explorations here, and I look forward to connecting with you sometime down the line.
Matt Stanton Beard
