How do you feel about the wilderness? Does it belong to everyone or is it only for special people? With me today we have New York-based abstract painter ⁠Matt Coombs⁠ whose paintings and drawings depict a fluidity between the natural environment, the figure and the synthetic. One of the fascinating aspects of Matts's practice is his willingness to seek the sublime in an augmented “nature”,  so much of the imagery used comes from his upbringing in the Burned Over District of Upstate NY a region known for a wave of apocalyptic Christian movements in the early Nineteenth Century and was the birthplace of Spiritualism and the American fascination with seances and spirits. Matt's paintings a language to better understand the ghost of the past and our entitlement to the landscape that blurred over from this history.

We talk about religion in the contemporary atmosphere, the art world and how it is affected by the wave of environmentalism and also some of his motivations and paintings.

Bio

Matt Coombs (b. 1988 Cayuga, NY) is an American artist currently living and working in Philadelphia, PA. Concentrating primarily on painting and drawing, Coombs references the landscapes from his upbringing in rural Central New York, and the light he observed living in Sarasota, Florida. In March 2020, Coombs waged his third solo exhibition “Lawn + Landscape” at Late Space in Pittsburgh, and has participated in numerous group shows across the US and London. These include Project Gallery V, Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia; Vox Populi in Philadelphia; the Woodmere Art Museum, PA; The Print Space, London; Lincoln Center in Fort Collins, Colorado; and Target Gallery in Alexandria, VA. He earned his MFA in Painting and Drawing from Tyler School of Art in 2016, and earned a BFA in painting from Ringling College of Art + Design in 2013.