American Art Collector - USA (2019-12)

136

A

new body of work by Matthew J.

Cutter, about 20 pieces in total, will

be on view at family-owned gallery Cutter

& Cutter Fine Art’s St. Augustine, Florida,

location. Many of the oil and acrylic pieces

seen in the show reflect the painter’s

recent summer trip to the South Dakota

Badlands and surrounding areas, including

Yellowstone National Park. 

“When you’re in Florida, you’re always

seeing flat landscape and you can only

see so far...so being out West and being

at elevation, you have the opportunity to

see for miles and miles...and I like the chal-

lenge of that,” says the artist. 

Cutter explains that amidst the hustle

and bustle of the trip with his family, there

wasn’t much time to sit down and paint in

plein air, so he primarily drew sketches of the

landscapes that captivated him, returning to

those sketches later on to paint them into

fully realized scenes. Often, this approach

of witnessing a scene and committing it to

memory with just a few hardened details

from a sketch, allows the artist more freedom

when he ultimately returns to the piece. He

says that he’s interested in the work of James

Abbott McNeill Whistler, who would go

out on the Thames with a sketchbook and

would “distill it through his memory.” Cutter

creates a lot of his paintings this way. “It’s an

amalgamation of a lot of different thoughts

about an area,” he says. “It can be just as

rewarding to pull a pure emotional element.”

The wilderness of Yellowstone is a major

muse for Cutter’s work in this show, with

oils like Cove at Yellowstone Lake, Entering

Yellowstone and Geyser at Norris Basin.

“Geyser Basin was something so spectac-

MATTHEW J. CUTTER

Endless Views

UPCOMING SHOW PREVIEW / CUTTER & CUTTER FINE ART

12/6 -12/ 7 St. Augustine, FL

1

Cove at

Yellowstone

Lake, oil on

canvas,

36 x 36"

2

Seasoned,

acrylic on

Crescent

board,

15 x 20"

3

Entering

Yellowstone,

oil on canvas,

36 x 36"

1