Harry Matthews

Harry Matthews (Hazman) conceives of his creativity as a spiritual discipline. 

Harry creates inspirational art. It is challenging, expressive and visionary; and you find in his preferred medium, oils, the most intriguing patterns and colour formulations.

He has exhibited his work in South Manchester.

 THE ART OF SEEING THE INVISIBLE

by Harry Matthews

"Vision is the art of seeing things invisible."
--Jonathan Swift

"I enjoy, above all, creating atmosphere in my paintings. I tend to drive colour about on the canvas until I have expressed it in my mind. I have a preconceived notion of what colours I will use on the palette and will rarely add anymore colours after having made the initial selection. What occurs in my painting is an 'emergent state' before completion, a moment I always recognise. Completion is the moment when I put my brush down and feel satisfied I have done all I can. In the accretion of paint you may read and understand what I am communicating. This occurs on a very subtle level.Often I feel a painting emerges in the crucial moment of the crisis of creativity. Its release is ecstatic. My art is an inquiry into colour and light. I am influenced by Goethe's Light and Colour Theory; the close observation of Nature and the effect of light upon phenomena, and how we perceive that fascinating sphere in which we live. As an artist I am interested in light and its polarity with dark. I am curious about a world, not necessarily made of things 'out there', but of potentiality realised in the world within, that perceives that world without."

Harry Matthews (Hazman) sees and senses the objects he is painting, and paints with the Imagination. Ultimately, he wants to get to the point where "sight" is an expression of inner vision. In this way he takes considerable time to put down a single stroke because each stroke needs to contain "the air, the light, the object, the composition, the character, the outline, the substance, the spirit, and the style."

He believes when he is painting, he is capturing a thing-in-itself, a Zen moment. His inspirational paintings capture the atmosphere surrounding what he seeks to paint; what he always strives to paint; which is a part of that reality, perceptible to the senses, which he is painting.

    NATURE MYSTICISM

  "The landscapes of poetry, the landscapes of great painters are not to be found in 'nature' at all. It is false doctrine that sees them in terms of materialism. They are landscapes of the soul, and the imagery is not an end but a means-a language for discoursing upon realities of the intelligible world, not the physical world. The theme of imaginative art is not physical but metaphysical. It is in the soul that their validity lies, not in nature. It is the poet and painter's task to perfect a language of correspondences...The poetic secret is to find in nature the images that correspond to the already and forever existing landscape of the eternal world."

--Kathleen Raine, 'Poetry in Relation to Traditional Wisdom.'

Harry Matthews paints in oil on canvas; very novel, aesthetic, kinetic, and luminous. His work is informed by the human condition, search for self, meaning and purpose. He is exploring colour theory in practice, Nature, the Noosphere and Biosphere, poetics, dream. He considers his arts practice to be a form of Zen meditation; his visual art is ' Nature Mysticism' . Each landscape is different, but always inspiring poetry and vision in the pictures.

He believes there is no ideal art trend, but he likes to find a language of correspondences with the imaginary, apparent, spiritual and  eternal worlds. His art rises out of time, evokes an acceptable discourse that viewers respond to, and by which he communicates that response. He believes the artist is a healer, and healing is an art.

Ut pictura poesis

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

--Leonardo da Vinci

"…and there are few who, going to the images, behold in them the realities, and these only with difficulty."

--Plato, Phaedrus

"I wonder where I would be without the opportunity to express myself in paint and ink. People get quite embarrassed when you talk about deep feelings and different realities.

However, I’m sure we all see pictures in clouds, in the rhythms of landscape and in trees. I am so delighted and intrigued by these things. I have an urge to share my experiences with other people. Art is a less embarrassing vehicle for expression. This is because I look at the familiar and see it from another point of view. ‘Do you see that man in the tree?’ is now a title for a painting rather than something I say to a bewildered passer by!

I’d like to call my type of art poetic. Yes, they are painterly abstractions, but they are also poems written in paint, possibly even prayers.

A small bit of creativity seems to have been given to me, and the challenge of Life has often forced me to explore a particular gift, rather than get frustrated by it. But to have it is one thing. I’ve learned, I must work consciously to develop it.

Where do my pictures come from, you ask? Well, the simple answer is that they come from inside me, from my artistic imagination. However, it is also the case that they are a response to the world outside. It is the interaction between the inner and outer life, that is the source of my paintings; the ‘in-scape’ and ‘out-scape’.

The greatest pleasure in exploring creativity, is in sharing and having my vision appreciated and understood by someone else.

I could write whole aesthetic tracts of pretentious nonsense about alternative dimensions from the fourth to the tenth, the astral and etheric planes, tree devas, sylphs, nymphs [though they do well exist!], pure psychic automatism, psychological pareidolia and apophenia, sophisticated Rorschach tests for the collective  unconscious and cosmic consciousness , channelling, alternative, subatomic, invisible and transcendental realities; and the all too romantic notions of the artist as a madman.

However, I will not conjure up any more apoplexy. The paintings speak for themselves. Let the viewer decide or not!

Mamekam sharanam vraja

יהוה           

Kosmopolites eimi

©  Harry Matthews 2012

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Astra Castra Numen Lumen                                                                                      The stars my camp, the Deity my light