Matthew Best

I'm excited to announce I now have an online store: https://squareup.com/store/matthew-best-studio/.

I'm in the process of adding more and more items to it but for now I have a number of works on paper I have been working on as well as a few collages of Madonna and George Michael. I will be adding more items, including paintings over the next few weeks. Please check it out. 

The newest work in the store is a series I call "Thirty Days of Donna."  I am making from video stills of Donna Summer performing "I Feel Love" as a project  for pride month. I'm making at least one of these every day in June. Each piece is one of a kind and is made with acrylic paint and acrylic ink, executed on irregularly torn paper (there will often be the remains of an older drawing on the back). 

Related to this I'm offering a few collages for sale. 

Images from my recent solo show at the Canterbury School in New Milford, CT. This show was the first time I have shown my paintings, collages, and works on paper at the same time. It was also the first time I have shown my recent oil paintings. It was interesting to see the relationships that developed between such a broad cross section of my work of the last three years. 

I have a Madonna collage postcard in An Exhibition of Mail Art at South Gallery, Greenfield Community College. It should be an interesting show with artists from all over the world. I'm just happy my piece arrived with minimal "collaboration" from the US postal system.

The show run from June 14th - July 12th.

Opening Reception: June 14th, 3pm - 7pm with the Creativity Caravan, a Traveling Tiny Book Exhibit! 

More information about South Gallery can be found here: http://art.gcc.mass.edu/gallery.html

Excited to have nine of my recent Madonna collages in this exciting group collage show taking place at the Stockman Gallery at Trinity-On-Main in New Britain, Connecticut.

Artist Talks at 5 p.m., reception 5:30-7 p.m. This show features work by Matthew Best, Matthew Feiner, and Margaret Vaughan
Curated by Melanie Carr. Refreshments, free. The exhibition continues through April 22.

 More information and directions can be found here: http://www.happeninghere.org/stockman
Double Queen, 2015. collage

I didn't really like Madonna until 1989 until I saw her video for "Express Yourself" for the first time. I vividly remember seeing it for the first time, my sister and I were watching MTV and the video aired. The song video were big, lavish, and beautiful. The moment I remember most is the part of the video when she bursts on stage wearing a masculine suit, grabbing her crotch and then opening her jacket to reveal a pink corset. It was electrical. I was hooked. Both my sister and I were in awe. It was a display of power unlike anything we had ever seen. My life was changed forever, I was now obsessed with Madonna.
At the time I was an overweight closeted kid. Madonna was like an explosion to me. She did what she wanted, she wasn't afraid, she didn't care. This was her power. She combined beauty, vulgarity and sex in a daring way. She was everything I feared and wanted to be.
My room became a shrine to her. I saved every picture I could find of her and taped them to the walls. I made drawings, paintings, and collages of her. I even made a 20lb plaster bust of her. I still credit her as one of the reasons I became an artist. She gave me courage to express myself.
I naively wasn't aware of was Madonna status as a gay icon. I didn't realize that by identifying myself as a Madonna fan I was in some ways outing myself as gay before I was fully able to really express it. Later on this is way I have again started making art with images of Madonna, to embrace being gay. To take something I wasn't fully aware of and celebrate it, to take naive obsession to turn it to outright veneration. I want to make the power I saw in these images in my youth visible to others.

detail of Seeress, 2015, collage