Three studies for a painting inspired by the Manic Street Preachers song “Elvis Impersonator Blackpool Pier”.
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One of a 3 part series combining elements from art historical images of Christ and the Virgin Mary in montages with other layered found elements such as flowers and drapery.
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In Focus: You Can’t take it with you
Around 2009 I began experimenting with Photoshop as a means to develop a more experimental approach to composition and colouring, that was not so much reliant on the strictures of reality. The digital montages I produced often served as a model for painting. My aim was not to replicate a smooth photographic surface, but to treat the montage as any other 3D subject to work from.
You can’t take it with you (blue) 
You can’t take it with you (green)
My thematic approach to building these images was based on the still life tradition, particularly memento mori. The two paintings in focus here were based on combining found images of skulls with my own photographs of coins, illustrating the anti-hoarder maxim of “you can’t take your money with you when you die”.
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Paintings added
The following paintings have been added to the gallery of available artwork. These paintings were produced during a period where I would combine found images to suggest new meanings and narratives, replicating elements of digital image manipulation by hand such as layering and transparency.
Email matthewgwells@outlook.com with any enquiries.
Debord, oil on canvas, 30 x 30cm 
Melancholy, oil on canvas, 30 x 30cm 
Fertility and decay, oil on canvas, 30 x 30cm
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In Focus: Cannibalising Courbet #3
The first of a new category of blog post, in which an available painting is picked out for discussion.
Around 2016 I began a series of paintings combining elements of Courbet paintings into new compositions, and borrowing his motifs but recasting myself into the title role.
On the one hand this was a concerted effort to learn about the artists method of constructing images, from composition to lighting, tonality and colour, but was also a means of using previously existing imagery to construct a new narrative.
Very often I would choose a Courbet painting featuring one or more women, and combine it with a self portrait. This evokes themes of lust, longing and romance, but also the relationship but artist and model.
Matt Wells Art 