Painting
www.mattchinian.com
mattchinianpaintingblog.blogspot.de
I was born in Cambridge, Ma. 1961, and grew up in Newton. I started painting as a teenager and found some excellent teachers, my work was academic and included a summer of study under R.H. Ives Gammel in Williamstown, Ma. in 1980. I proceeded in this manner until a sophomore at Bennington College, where my work changed dramatically, focusing on sculpture, I kept figuration but in a symbolic manner. My work developed, I learned new techniques. I got my B.A in 1984. Then an M.F.A. in sculpture from SUNY Albany in 1988. Having esoteric building skills I put them to use, fabricating sculpture, architecture models, children‘s museum exhibits, advertising props, signs, etc, etc, etc. When I moved to Cambridge, NY in 1989 I needed a house, so I re-built a few, learned a lot about building restoration and supported myself doing carpentry. Later I specialized in historic window restoration, which I also still do. I married Alane Ball in 1998, Emma was born in 1999 and Hope in 2004, being dad took over. All this time I noticed that I lived in a spectacularly beautiful place. Somewhere in the back of my mind painting these landscapes became inescapable, by May of 2012 re-started painting.
Cambridge, New York and environs are as picturesque as any location on earth, and I‘m smitten by her beauty. I go out and paint to get away. My subject is the farmland, the rivers and streams, the hills, mountains and roads. The object is truth and beauty and lies and ugliness. They intersect, they talk, they fight, they try to work it out. I learn how to paint everyday and every new start is a fall from sobriety into the abyss of intoxication. I can‘t get enough.
