Light My Life

McLennan is part of a vanguard of young painters who have twisted the conventional, naturalist approach to depicting animals and environmental themes in mischievous ways to the serious end of drawing attention to environmental issues. In the tradition of great naturalist painters such as John James Audubon, McLennan has become both student and advocate: inspired by many hours spent in the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains, this VCU grad and Virginia native has undertaken an in-depth inquiry into the evolution and displacement of North America wildlife, and his understanding of changing patterns in their behavior, incurred as a direct result of changes and destruction to their natural habitats, is evidenced in his maturing body of work. As informed as McLennan is regarding scientific developments in the changing environment, his works are first and foremost allegorical; these finely rendered large-scale paintings on paper are on first view whimsical, yet the darker nature of their message cannot be denied. Like Edward Hicks “The Peaceable Kingdom” which depicts a post-apocalyptic future in which the natural food chain has been disbanded and all manner of creatures have become friendly companions, McLennan depicts nature upended, and in so doing he means to tell us the story of our own undoing—there is at once something innocent and suspect taking place in these barren tableaus. Figuring prominently among the skeletal trees which serve as broken shelter to the smaller wildlife depicted in his paintings are fantastical plant-like bears in various repose—draped, 2 hanging, prone and often torn, McLennan’s topiary bears serve not only as sustenance and shelter for playful groupings of elk and raccoons, moose and foxes, but pointedly appear to be the only greenery available to them. The bears, in being devoured, suggest a kind of symbiosis, but could also serve as effigies for a human society that has upset the balance of global ecology. McLennan received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2002 and has recently been awarded a fellowship through the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and his work is to be featured in the upcoming issue of New American Paintings.

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All paintings are acrylic and graphite on paper

I have been painting in America since 1984, but Chinese history has always been the essence of my work. I grew up singing The Internationale. In my middle school English class, our teacher gave us the English version of the lyrics. We once truly believed in Communism, in a socialist utopian dream, and in heroism. I have since replaced those beliefs with a kind of modern humanism, but some fundamental values and ideology from my thirty-six years in China stay with me. I was never interested in being a victim struggling in an authoritarian society. I admired heroes and wanted to be a tough solider. Even today, when I’m wounded, I’d rather lick the blood and get back to work – like the women soldiers in “Daughters of China,” the 1949 propaganda film that serves as the basis for my most recent paintings. Usually I paint from historical photographs of China, but in this case the film offered me a sequence of panoramic stills, each frame filled with the heroic and desperate struggles of eight female soldiers who, in 1938, sacrificed their lives to save the retreating Chinese army. I saw this film as a child in China, and it shaped my expectations of women as protagonists in the emerging socialist utopia. Of course, utopia never arrived, but a kind of hard won feminism stayed with me the rest of my life, and served me well in America. History is not a static image or a frozen story. It is not a noun. Even if its images and stories are very old, it is always flowing forward. History is a verb. The new paintings are my way of painting life back into my memories of a propaganda film that, over time, has become a document of the revolutionary sincerity that permeated my childhood. Even the actors in the film believed in their roles. When they walked into the river, carrying their dead and wounded, they were going home.

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Prisoners

Prostitutes

Matthew Woodson was born and raised in rural southern Indiana. He graduated from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in early 2006. He still lives in Chicago in an apartment full of hardwood floors and taxidermy, with an unapologetically vocal cat and a dog that is skinnier than the grain.

Press :

“Tattooed women, skeletons and violence imagery are the elements defined in Matthew Woodson’s work. A novel like style makes his pieces astonishing and mysterious. Each illustration tells a different story that makes you wonder more. ” - designdontpanic.com “ His work is very muted, often in shades of grey. There is something very rock n’ roll about the style that Woodson works in; it is young, edgy, and full of character. His drawings are some of the best I have seen in recent months. ” - einbahn blog “ His sometimes stark, sometimes poetic images are spare, usually consisting of line work and a few tones of gray or muted color. He works in pen, brush and ink, occasionally with the addition of color in gouache and frequently with color added digitally in Photoshop. His subjects are people, often portrayed with unf lattering directness and occasionally in compositions that don’t include the head, studies of natural objects like plants and animal skulls, and landscapes. ” - linesandcolors.com “ Matthew Woodson’s comics and illustrations are sometimes stark, sometimes poetic, but always spare, with a noir touch. Woodson renders his images with careful skill and detail. Not surprising for someone who started drawing comics AND scientific illustrations at the same time (he’s got a background in biology). His linework is elegantly set off by his restrained use of just a few tones of gray or muted color. ” - snips.com “ Matthew Woodson’s graphic novel style of illustration doesn’t exactly break new ground, but it’s breathtakingly well done. His articulation of a half-nude woman’s back is meticulous and spot-on, almost as if he used the Rotoscoping technique used in Waking Life to create his lyrical, mysterious, and sometimes violent imagery. He seems to have an obsession with tattooed women, his skeleton, and the bad guys from Karate Kid. ” - virb.com

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