About the Artist

Thomas Matyas was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, where he now lives and works. After receiving a degree in art history from Canisius College, his main creative pursuit was music composition until he began making sculpture and painting in 2014, inspired by memories of the industrial landscapes of the North Buffalo neighborhood where he grew up.

Thomas is an Exhibiting Member of the Buffalo Society of Artists, and shows his work frequently in Western New York. In October of 2021 he presented his first solo exhibition at the Carnegie Art Center in North Tonawanda, New York. His work has been recognized with awards in regional and national juried exhibitions, and can be found in private collections in the U.S., Britain and Italy.

The first word that might come to mind when viewing my work, abstract, is not quite accurate. I’m not trying to depict the world as it is, but I do use some of the tools of representational art. There’s a kind of perspective (although not rational) and sometimes a suggestion of light falling on surfaces. Objects pass in front of other objects. Maybe a better word is metaphoric. Geometric and architectural structures stand in for mysterious states of mind. This visual language probably evolved unconsciously in the margins of my school notebooks, where I doodled lines, boxes, and curves that somehow calmed my anxieties and conjured a more sensible world.

There’s a marked sense of nostalgia in the work I make now. The forms hark back to early 20th century modernism and memories of the machine graveyards of North Buffalo, where I grew up. The materials (oils, graphite, ink, wood) are mostly traditional. Like many of the artists I admire, I’m unapologetic about trying to make beautiful objects. The word beauty might suggest something pleasant, decorative, and useless. To me, it means something uncanny, inexplicable, and more valuable than ever in an age of incessant digital noise.