Matt Foley - motivated artist

IN THE HEART AND MIND OF COOL
by Max Alexander

     Matt Foley is an artist. The life of a visual artist is, at best, extraordinarily challenging. Every work is a new foray into the realm of creativity, requiring a gamut of abilities, experiences and talents.

     Described as an, “alchemical distillery of emotions, experiences and extrapolations translated from the fourth dimension to two-dimensional surfaces,” Foley is an artist's artist.

     “Matt Foley (a) central mythopoeic mind, creates poetry through the controlled explosion of intellect and energy. (A) restless talent in search of objectification, (he) generates an entire art world as he casts about,” said New Art Examiner - the Chicago-based art magazine.

     The work of Matt Foley affords an intriguing look into the complex and enigmatic mind of an artist. Foley is an excited and absorptive philosopher of paint - free and wide ranging - continually transmitting his eloquent spirit to canvas.

     “I am a poet of pigment trying to translate a seething gamut of sensory and ultra-sensory impulses into my own dynamic fusion of paint and perception,” the Wichita artist reveals.

     With the tenacity of some kind of intrepid explorer, he charts the inner recesses of his very personal reality. Employing that which suits his philosophical concerns, Matt Foley emphatically renders his ideas about the vicissitude, structure, and mystical nature of existence and an ever unfolding sense of self. Foley is truly an indomidable spirit, continually immersed in a cycle of endless curiosity and relentless experimentation.

     His creations are an exegesis of the psyche, provocative proclaimations of an adroit visionary, poignant tales of strange beauty.

     As an artist, Foley seems to have a remarkable capacity to discern subtle and variegated facets of life, adopting this insight to create “mot justes” and the end results are art works smoldering with elusive, evocative spirituality. An elementally driven and insatiable soul defines itself in characteristics that imbue his work with an uncompromised vitality.

     Focusing a primal, passionate power, Matt Foley paints with the throttle wide open - with brush or mouse. He executes his ideas in a turbulent, painterly fashion often applying pigments like a fencer - jabbing, thrusting, slashing - his rapier intellect burning at a fevered pitch. Foley finds just about anything and everything fodder for use in his creative endeavors and is a study in the intelligence and intrigue that defines an artist - a cut above the mere mortal.

     The tense immediacy of an arrested moment coupled with the inherent unpredictability of the medium itself contribute significantly to those poetic qualities embodied in Foley’s compositional strategies. This dynamic fusion of pigment and perception is energy and motion captured and made visible in a viable format, a meld of mind and material.

     The resulting images are an admixture of intense, emotional elements. Frequently, Matt Foley adroitly combines referential and shamanistic shapes, amalgamations of biomorphic images, a lexicon of cryptic symbols and articulate spatial manipulation to create a perspicacious synthesis. The result is compellingly lush. The substantive animating force of this sublime spiritual introspection is the rich interplay of color; scintillating contrasts so vibrant as to seem, at times, to actually reveal another dimension beyond the static surface - a fluid state of infinite possibilities.

     The artist uses vivacious colors as a plastic means, a building process where forms do not precede but rather develop out of color. Foley’s propensity for color in unequaled. His palette possesses the ferocity of a rampaging bull while maintaining the finesse of a fine jeweler.

     It is somewhat unfair to compare, but Matt Foley’s confident mastery of paint does recall the sensuous virtuosity of Kandinsky, the frenzied exuberance of Pollock, the bold affirmations of de Kooning and the surreal sensibilities of Dali.

     Ultimately, Foley’s work is an abstract reflection of where he's been, what he's seen, what he dreams and who he is - past and present - a.k.a. a scholar, writer, poet, hippie, roughneck, radical, cowboy, farmhand, biker, designer, mystic and magician romancing the philosopher's stone. First and foremost, Matt Foley is an artist. The paint brush has remained a faithful tool of choice for many years but new technology is evident indeed.

     This artist continues to create a new, radiant and beautiful bodies of work with its own personality that exists beyond the bounds of any specific historical tradition. His works are to be relished and treasured - visual intrigues whose pleasures are highly sophisticated, intense works that exist comfortably in their own time and space. The deeper associative, emotional and psychological meanings require contemplative viewing to unfold and ultimately comprehend the artist's deeply personal vision. - M.A.

Matt Foley, also an award-winning designer, has created a set of new cards for his use as an artist. Creating both a calling card and a postcard design, Matt Foley has tapped into a heraldic tradition from a bygone era.

Click the card to see the larger versions and to read more about the idea behind it. Or click here.

Now you can enhance your quality of life while making a great long-term investment - and help feed and clothe a sometimes starving artist - by welcoming one of Matt Foley's works of art into your home or office. By clicking the bill you will have access to select artworks from an award-winning artist - Matt Foley. Save him from having to live in a van down by the river. Or click here.

Fine art is the spice that can flavor your life.

Matt Foley - a brief synopsis:

Matt Foley is deservedly considered a renaissance man. He is a painter, sculptor, printmaker, metalsmith - silver and gold, photographer, film maker, lapidary (stonecutter), graphic designer, poet and writer - among other things.

This award-winning artist has had his work included in major exhibitions in 48 states and a number of countries outside the U.S. In one exhibit - an overview of 50 years of American art - his work was kept company by the works of other great artists including Andrew Wyeth, Willem de Kooning, Julian Schnabel, Ellsworth Kelly, Alex Katz, Roy Lichtenstein, Jennifer Bartlett, Red Grooms, Janet Fish, Susan Rothenberg, Jack Levine and other major names.

Matt Foley was the creator and founder of the world's largest walk-by public art exhibition called the Phantom Art Gallery and this concept was adopted by cities across North America, including Los Angeles.

One noted art critic and professor of modern art history said Foley is an "impresario of progressive art forms - all art forms." Boris Yeltsin, first Russian President, took a painting by Matt back to Russia when he visited in 1993.

Over the years Matt has organized and curated numerous gallery and museum exhibitions to provide valuable exposure to fellow artists, "generating entire art worlds," according to art historian, Rich Leslie, Ph.D.

It is important to note that Matt Foley is extremely understated. One would never guess that he has had such luminaries as Allan Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, William Burroughs, Ted Berrigan and others as friends from days past or that he had racked up so many accomplishments and noteworthy distinctions.

For a starving artist, incredibly, Matt Foley is also a major philanthropist, donating one of the largest collections of Southern Plains Native American contemporary art to the Indian Center Museum in Wichita, Kansas.

Matt also has a history in the concert business with his involvement in bringing groups like the Police, Talking Heads, the Specials, the Buzzcocks and numerous others in their initial U.S. tours to the Great Plains. - Das Sutro