By Vicki Hillhouse
A typewriter. A lawn chair. A squirt gun. Seemingly common, often nostalgic, items are celebrated on the canvases of artist Matthew Pierce.
“I think my paintings are an attempt to preserve things that kind of divorce from the digital realm — an attention to things that are temporary,” he says.
Pierce came to fine art after more than two decades in graphic arts and illustration. He went back to school and earned his master’s degree in 2015 at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. From there he returned to his alma mater, Walla Walla University, where became an art professor in the same place where he studied commercial art in the late 1980s.
Since 2020, he’s worked exclusively as a professional artist, focusing mainly on oil painting and contemporary realism and appreciating the moments as they happen.
“That’s really all that matters in life,” he says.
Watch a video to learn more about Matthew Pierce by clicking here!