Our Guest Artist – William Matthews

2012 Featured Guest Artist
William Matthews

With masterful brush strokes, he is most well known for watercolor paintings which document the timeless landscapes and people of the West including real-life icons - the remaining working horseback cowboys of the Great Basin region and the "buckaroos" whose beginnings trace back to early California vaquero days. His luminous images connect the viewer to the land, the traditions and identities all of which can reveal hidden vulnerability of regional endangered ways of life. He takes viewers beyond imaginings, a place authentic and dynamic, steeped in history and the present.

Matthews was raised in the California San Francisco Bay area. His professional career began in Los Angeles designing album covers for Warner Brothers and Captiol Records. He lived in Europe from 1975 to 1980. Upon his return, he settled in Colorado running a graphic design studio until 1990 when he became a full-time painter. His work is included in the permanent collections of numerous museums and has been exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad. His first book "Cowboys & Images - The Watercolors of William Matthews" chronicled a decade of his artistic works. Other areas of studies include Ireland; Heart Land: Amish/Mennonite and Shaker Villages; China; The Blue Nile; Spain; also Mongolia and India. His most recent book "Working the West" shares the artist's western landscapes and people he has encountered over a 25 year period traveling the west. William Matthews paintings are currently shown in selected western states galleries along with special showings at his new "Great Basin Gallery" in Denver, Colorado.