Matthew Picton, Artist

Much more to see on the artist's website.  Link here.

The above image and below text from the blog In the Make: Studio Visits with West Coast Artists.  Link here.

How would you describe your subject matter or the content of your work?
I would describe the subject matter of my work as fictional cities, viewed from writers’ perspectives and set in specific time periods. Right now I’m making a piece about Istanbul— it’s a good subject as it’s a city that has existed in history in different permutations and has a very rich and important history in over a number of different time periods quite a few centuries. The piece I’m working on is looking at Istanbul mostly in the 20th century and I’ve chosen novels to work with that consider Istanbul in this time period. In general I like to work with cities that have gone through significant change or disaster, and many cities fit the bill because most cities have gone through massive transformations at one point or another in their history.

What are you presently inspired by— are there particular things you are reading, listening to or looking at to fuel your work?
I am currently reading Ahmet Tampinar’s A Mind at Peace which looks at the Turkey of the 1920s through the 50s and Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City as well as Mehmet Kalpakli’s Ottoman Lyric Poetry. I just recently visited Istanbul and so I’m fully engaged in researching and reading about it in order to make a sculpture of it.