The Grouper

If you look at my work over the last twenty years, you may notice my early work depicts fairly everyday scenes.  The night before a race.  Relaxing with a beer after a hard day on the farm.  Lunchtime.

But as time passes, you'd notice strange, incongruous and just weird elements worming their way in.  Mechanical sea monsters.  A space rocket in line at a gas station.  Pickups with tentacles.  And mermaids.

So many mermaids.

"But why, Matt, why paint weird stuff instead of the sort of Americana themed work you see printed on coffee mugs?"

It's simple.  I like weird and ridiculously unlikely stuff.  I like the idea of taking a '53 Caddy ambulance and making an altered gasser out of it.  I like the thought of a Dodge Power Wagon modified to do a 10 second quarter mile straight up a vertical rock face.  Everybody makes a gasser out of a Willys coupe, but has anyone tried it with a stock Willys woody body (no fiberglass, thank you)?  Or a 1965 International Travelall?  I want to see that, and if I have to do it myself in the form of a painting, so be it.

I might even throw in a mermaid or two.

Because who doesn't love mermaids? 

Anyway, this piece is a mild expression of this idea of weird.  A sort of  not too pretty grandma's car, in grandma colors, done up for the dragstrip by a mermaid with a toolkit.

Put that on your coffee mug!