Matthew is fascinated by the process of extracting the essence from a scene, abstracting it slightly from the reality to enhance its impact. Mainly painted on location initially, sometimes reworked in the studio, at the moment he works almost entirely in water borne media; watercolour, pen and ink, acrylic, water soluble pencil, etc. The greatest part of his work is landscape based, though he also paints portraits and still-life occasionally. He comes from an artistic family, with his father, sister and nephew all having produced work for sale on a regular basis. He has painted all his life, but seriously and consistently for the last 18 years, and has paintings in a number of private collections as well as some in restaurants. For the last 30 years he has been involved in restaurant and retail design, but is now spending more time painting.