Bio
Matt Hopen is a painter with a love for antiques, nature, and the spirit in everyday things. He received his BFA in Painting from Pratt in 2022. While studying he focused on painting with unconventional materials like hot glue on cardboard. He also created a series of abstract tree paintings by spilling paint in a semi-controlled way with the belief that artwork created with limited control is imbued with an element of mystery and intrigue. This still holds true to him in his current practice.
In 2021 Matt took a gap year and worked in a furniture restoration shop. This experience informed his own work and grew his love of woodworking and creative problem solving.
Picture Framing is also an important part of Matt's work. He believes frames are integral in transitioning the viewer's perspective from the three-dimensional world to the two-dimensional world of a painting. He also sees frames as a useful way to remind the viewer that paintings are objects.
Matt most recently showed artwork in a show, The Frequency, at Broodworks in Brooklyn. He was also an Artist in residence at Colerain Center for Education, Preservation, and The Arts in Spruce Creek PA in 2024.
Artist Statement
Matt Hopen is known for his uncanny landscapes, still lifes, and animal paintings.
He intentionally shows process within his work by using mismatched colors, collage, and abraded imagery. These features tell the story of the life of an artwork and how it came to be.
Matt boils down his subject matter to its quintessential form in order to create a scene that feels ageless and unknown-yet familiar.
He will start a painting with a collaged background or painted abstract forms as the seed to his painting. What follows is what he chooses to enhance or diminish. Sandpaper also plays a role in this by subduing and altering imagery in a new way which can lead in an entirely new direction.
Ending up with a finished work is a matter of the artist's intuition.
-Matt Hopen