Matthew John Atkinson

Matthew John Atkinson is a fine artist who uses contemporary painting and ideas of beauty, nostalgia and transience...

His paintings of disused buildings are a nostalgic appreciation of the unlikely beauty that evolves from their natural decay.

'The work I am exhibiting is called Nowhere; it is where the 'nowhere' becomes the 'now here' created through the autonomous sphere of art,' explains Matthew.

'Through natural decay and defacement an unlikely intangible beauty enfolds.

'I try to capture the appreciation of their transience, rescuing them for eternity. Challenging stereotyped assumptions and providing an alternative experience to people's norm.

'The places that I paint are places I have a connection to, that I find curiously beautiful and challenge ideas of what is beauty.

'And most importantly I have to have had a personal experience. I never paint anything sourced from found imagery. I feel that I am able to express an honesty through personal experience that I otherwise could not.'