MATTHEW HILDEBRANDT

After the first time I saw Cafe Terrace at Night, by Vincent Van Gogh, I knew I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. I was seven, growing up in the Okanagan Valley of BC. Van Gogh’s masterpiece was printed on a slightly dented pencil tin at the local thrift store. It cost 10 cents & I had a dime burning a hole in my Oshkosh B’goshes. I guess you could say it was meant to be.

The rest of my childhood was spent daydreaming of paintings that I would one day create & I would imagine what the scenes around me would look like if transformed into a Van Gogh-esque style artwork. I spent hours outside drawing the trees and mountains around our home.

I first made the leap from pencils & pastels to oil painting at the age of 15, both painting & drawing portraits, doing botanical studies, and painting nude figures even as an adolescent, with a particular passion for expressing the beauty of unconventional (in the art world) body types.

I had no interest in artistic training, preferring instead to be “self-taught” and learning through my own self-propelled experimentation. Even at that young age, I could not see how someone else could possibly teach me how I was going to paint like me.

Over the years I also explored many other creative facets, most notably music & poetry writing. But I have always fallen back to my first love of oil paint. There is a richness in colour and texture in oils that is so sensual and alive.

For the past few years I have refocused on nude figure work. I just can’t get over how beautiful people are, all people, and how truly unappreciative we are of our own beauty. I think that life is truly perfect. And I just don’t see how it’s possible that humanity is not a part of that. This is what I want to express. The perfection & beauty of being human.

I have so many artistic influences. Artists like Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, David Hockney, Tom Thomas, Emily Carr, Rothko, Winfred Rembert & Diego Rivera and the indigenous & folk arts from around the world have informed and inspired how I create.

I moved to the island known as Salt Spring in the spring of 2024 and joined the dynamic Salt Spring Gallery of Fine Arts to showcase my work.