"Brut, primitive, intuitive, outsider, folk, visionary, naive, untrained – whatever, I have been creating the things that I do long before I heard any of those terms used for art. When it comes to my work I could care less how the viewer decided to label it because fitting into someone’s little box will never be my goal, I am not catering to an audience, my work is strictly self serving."

Usually working straight from the subconscious he allows split-second choices (or mistakes) to guide the outcome of his work, often creating a series of starts that he reworks, details, and even destroys as he deems necessary. The majority of his pieces are mixed media work made up of several layers of process. Space is often filled with illegible train of thought rants married with characters that have been compared to a cross between brutish cave scrawling and modern-day pop graffiti. He has recently been collaborating with plush art toy designer and author John Murphy and found object art robot creator Mark May. In addition to creating pieces in mixed media, encaustics, and sculpture, Matt is currently producing his own line of original shirt designs and prints. He is also in the process of writing several children's books, screenplays, and his self published autobiographical comic, “Day By Day: The Life of Matt Deterior.” Deterior is the curator of Freedom Gallery (Lancaster, PA) and currently resides in Reading, PA with his wife and their four black cats.

“All we have is now, the future holds no promise, the past is dead and can not be trusted. My creations are pieces of the present that I steal before becoming part of the past. Within these there is no “good,” nor is there “evil,” there just is what there is, truth. Sometimes these things are all I have and most of the time they are more than I want. Either way, I am humbled by my work and the life I am able to secure within it.”

 


Matt Deterior 

(1979-Present) Shillington, PA

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