Milo Matthieu is a first-generation Haitian painter born in Los Angeles, CA in 1990. Drawing upon the artistic history of his family heritage, in particular the Haitian paintings and African masks that populated his childhood home, Matthieu has developed a distinctive visual language of bright colors and anthropomorphic forms by which he translates his cultural legacy into contemporary terms.
Representational paintings of landscapes, market scenes, and people traveling through towns and villages on tap taps—brightly colored buses with distinctive designs—have served as a longtime inspiration for Matthieu who grew up not in Haiti like his parents and extended family, but in Los Angeles and New York. Such paintings, as well as wooden sculptures, busts, and masks were thus integral to the the creation of the rich, though distant, Haitian imaginary that informed Matthieu’s understanding of his heritage and are reflected in his paintings of bold, abstracted figures. Grounded in psychic automatism, his paintings process begins with the loose, unconscious movement of his brush across the canvas. As line and color take shape, life emerges within his compositions and Matthieu embraces a dialogue with his unconscious, allowing intuition to guide him as he focuses on no one subject or idea but rather on the totality of his experiences, both lived and inherited.
Milo Matthieu has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including A Note to Self, M+B Gallery, Los Angeles; Flowers Beyond the Sunset with Sorry We’re Closed, Brussels; Silenced, Yet Celebrated at Kravets Wehby Gallery, New York; and Isolated Thoughts at The Cabin, Los Angeles. Recent group exhibitions include Caldonia, Salon 94, New York; Show Me the Signs, Blum and Poe, Los Angeles; The Great Storeroom Show, Beers Gallery, London; and Black and White VS Color, Richard Heller, Los Angeles. Milo Matthieu lives and work in New York, NY.