Matthew Potter is a classically trained artist presently residing in Seattle, WA with a penchant for expressive abstracts, yet renders sensitive and delicate portraits having a stunning ability to reproduce accurate likenesses. His early influences came from his sister, who is also an artist. He spent many “sick” days in elementary school visiting the vast resources of Washington D.C.’s National museums. His first drawings came while sitting on the front stoop as a four year old making images in dew and dust. He’s been painting seriously since the tenth grade and began his art career in the third grade with masking tape and tissue figure sculptures. Matthew’s first formal art instruction was still-life class in the sixth grade, while still in elementary school.

For Matthew, the portrait is a means to enter the psyche of another while trying to unconsciously express their personality and rendering accurately their resemblance. It’s a unique challenge, yet he maintains an uncanny ability of capturing an accurate likeness while showing a bit of the model soul. He uses his classical training, constantly honed by intensive master classes, while continually pushing boundaries developed in his other styles: abstraction, mixed media, and referential street art. As a result, his portraits are energetic, lively, fully contemporary, yet with very keen resemblances. Although he works in oils or graphite, he prefers charcoal or pastel portraits.

Matthew is a veteran of the Salt Lake City studio scene and now establishing himself in Seattle; he has exhibited locally, and received regional awards for his artwork and contributions to the local art scene. His paintings and drawings are in numerous collections regionally and Matthew is proud of having paintings in a collection with a Dale Chihuly glass sculpture.