Hamilton artist Adam Matak’s flower collages develop out of unconventional supplies

Adam Matak admits to generally feeling responsible when he has enjoyable making artwork.

“I’m undecided whether it is my upbringing, coming from a producing city, or if I used to be taught this at school, however I’ve usually felt that the act of creating artwork is labour,” he says. “I felt if the method is arduous, if it is sort of a battle, you might be heading in the right direction.”

Matak, 45, is a full-time artist and primarily a painter of flowers and gardens. When his provides ran low throughout COVID, he hit on paint pattern playing cards, or swatches, as a strategy to save on paint. After which the swatches, minimize into diversified shapes, grew to become the dominant materials in his work.

“After I first began making these collages, they got here so simply and I discovered them a lot enjoyable,” he tells me. “These works have been such a pleasure that I didn’t belief them.”

Matak dives into his swatch stash for (in) natural, an exhibition on the Meeting Gallery — the gallery behind Redchurch Café in downtown Hamilton. On supply are photographs of flowers organized in vases in indoor settings and rising in abundance in gardens.

“My artwork has at all times been a direct reflection of my lived expertise. I assume that’s why it adjustments a lot,” he says. “I began working with flowers as subject material when my spouse and I first moved to Hamilton from Toronto, by means of Boston. I’m positive there’s some type of metaphor there of being constantly uprooted.

“And turning into a brand new dad or mum and the varied lockdowns that occurred after that has prompted a interval of internal contemplation, consciousness of life cycles and development which saved directing me to flowers.”

“How we have been introduced collectively” focuses on a energetic bunch of crimson poppies in a vase on a desk. The flowers are at totally different levels of their lives, some in full bloom, others budding. Some look upward, whereas others curve and hunch downward.

Matak builds up every flower with layers of swatch card, some bits minimize into the thinnest of strips, each including bulk and texture to the floor of the panel.

And swatches simply occur to offer an virtually countless provide of colors and tones. Matak intensifies the reds of the poppies with blues. A lighter halolike mixture of blues transfer across the flowers and a darker model hovers on the edges. The blues are minimize into geometric shapes, whereas the flowers look extra rounded and naturalistic.

For “Swatch Association: Home Setting,” Matak locations the vase of flowers on a desk and provides a chair. However a number of well-placed scribbles overturn the lifelikeness of the setting. So do the printed phrases and numbers that seem all through. They belong to the swatches and function reminders of the place Matak’s unconventional supplies come from.

“I’ve grown to like collage for composing and having these modular items you may transfer round till it strikes a chord. Moreover, I used to make work that integrated textual content, so the textual content that accompanied most of the swatches have been a welcome part. And all paint color names are so optimistic.”

In “We lay down and we glance up,” flowers, leaves, grasses and shadows add as much as a boisterous association in a backyard. The vegetation varieties a type of semicircle that strikes upward and frames a chilled blue-sky area.

“Increasing Wild Backyard III“ offers a variation on Matak’s backyard imagery. The flowers take over the entire of the pictorial area.

“The content material and the fabric actually assist one another for me and constantly give me extra to dig into,” Matak says. “There’s nonetheless a large number of prospects to discover.”

And he actually is coming to phrases with having enjoyable within the creation of those items.

“I preserve making an attempt to remind myself that life is tough sufficient — and artwork doesn’t must be.”

Adam Matak

What: (in)natural

The place: The Meeting Gallery, at Redchurch Cafe, 68 King St. E.

When: till Nov. 29

Hours: open each day, weekdays 8 to six

Contact: [email protected]

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