The End Is Where They Start From shows a selection of works on canvas by Peter Matthews in the form of hybrid paintings, which the artist has produced over the past year while traveling along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.

The works were entirely painted outside as Matthews ventured along the coast in a nomadic and solitary pursuit to embrace and experience the sublime and the rawness of the landscape. They were attempts to reach out into, and work out (through the act of painting), how to visualise and make sense of a deeply spiritual experience. The paintings are composed from two profound occurrences the artist experienced whilst working along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, sometimes for weeks at a time. These painterly hemispheres of spiritual, physical, mental and emotional experience are held in suspended animation by a single running line of thread, effectively unifying painted and performative voyages and odysseys from two distinct coasts.

Matthews incorporates (both as mark-making and collaged elements) found and handmade objects, such as driftwood (as with the piece ‘Way’, which makes use of found objects from the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur, Mexico, and the Atlantic coast of Cornwall, England) and fired pieces of clay, to further the haptic and materialistic sensibility, as well as to create a dialogue with the sense of place, the animistic, the present and absent, the poetic and mystical.

Peter Matthews lives and works in Leicester, England. He graduated with a BA(Hons) and MFA from Nottingham Trent University. Solo exhibitions include: 'The End is Where They Start From', Pasaje Montoya, Barcelona, Spain (2018); 'From the Pacific to the Atlantic', Strange Cargo, Folkestone, Kent (2017); ‘Continuum’, James Cohan Gallery, New York (2011); and ‘Sea Marks’, Mendes Wood DM, Sao Paulo (2011). Group exhibitions include: ‘After Image: Contemporary Artists and Photography’, Art House Productions Gallery, New Jersey (2015); ‘Power of the Sea’, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (2014); and ‘Appendage, Konnektor’, Forum fur Kunste, Hannover (2014). Matthews completed an artist resident at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography California in 2015, and was a finalist in the Francois Schneider Contemporary Talents competition in 2014. He was also shortlisted on the Sky Arts programme ‘Landcape Artist of the Year’. In 2017 he was awarded the Hugh Casson Drawing Prize at Royal Academy of Arts, London. He was selected for the John Moores Painting Prize in 2018, and also showed a large body of works on paper at the Saatchi Gallery, London in the spring. Matthews’ solo showings with BEERS London include ‘In Search of the Sublime’, London (2016); and ‘Artissima Art Fair’, Torino (2016). Group showings with BEERS London include ’75 Works on Paper’, London (2017). He has a further upcoming show with BEERS in early 2019.