The Autumn Auction 2020

"Good Times Brewing I & II were painted at my studio in Tottenham, North London. I wanted to create two paintings that whilst making up one piece, could be displayed at any distance from each other, or even on different walls in a room, and still work together. I did this by giving them matching frameworks, which follow vertical and horizontal lines throughout their own unique and busy landscapes. I think this gives them a feeling of both chaos and order, which I like. As quite often happens, these started with a plan that looks nothing like the end result." - Matt Dosa, 2020

Matt Dosa's career started in graffiti, and although now he paints on canvas more often than concrete, street art continues to influence his work to this day - both in the materials used, and the artists Matt looks to for inspiration.

“My paintings are always partly, if not entirely, unplanned. I create spontaneous landscapes of pattern and form, masking one part of the landscape while I create another; not knowing how the whole will appear until the mask is peeled away. I sometimes think of my work as a sequence of experiments or iterations: each painting taking elements from the previous one, and building them into new environments. I work with texture and mixed media, with acrylic and spray paint at the heart of my toolkit.”

Although Matt's work is completely abstract, he is often thinking about letter forms as he paint, and parts of letters can be found scattered through the work, echoing his time as a graffiti writer. It’s for the viewer to decide what his landscapes mean, and to label what they find in them, if anything. 

“It interests me to learn what springs into people’s minds when they look at my work - one man’s jungle canopy is another’s cluster of open parasols, and I often ask other people to name the finished pieces. For me, I see nothing but the multitude of techniques I’ve employed to apply paint to canvas, and the new possibilities born in this painting, which I will carry over to the next.”