What happens when you stop running from art?
On the north end of Blueberry Hill road there’s a small, log-cabin-style house that looks out over a spectacular view of Taos mountain and watches over the Upper Ranchitos Valley.
The little studio belonging to Matthew Gonzales is crammed with pieces in progress. Even his computer screen is covered with a piece of art work. A framed drawing covers the front of the wide-screen monitor. After being questioned, Gonsales said he couldn’t remember the last time he had it on.
There is art everywhere. Clay sculptures in various degrees of completeness line the shelves. Cast pieces, with their colored patinas, line other shelves.
One project he’s working on is a representation of the muses. Another is a life-sized bust of Barack Obama, a commission that may end up going through several versions before the final work is done.
Gonzales said he learned early on that to become truly good at sculpture and the human form he needed to completely submerse himself in the processes of his chosen medium.
Born in Embudo and raised in Questa, Gonzales took the classical approach to becoming an artist, where one serves under a master and learns the most basic and rudimentary skills of his profession before being allowed to move on.
“I put myself through college at the Colorado Institute of Art. When I was growing up, a lot of kids thought their only choice is the military. I actually was going to go that route with the Marines, then I got a few scholarships, when helped tremendously. Art was what I really want to pursue. I used to come down to Taos to talk to the established artists and ask their opinion about how to set about being one. They all told me to go to art school and make art every day.”
At first, he thought he was going to be a landscape painter, but drawing the figure really caught on for him in college. He graduated at top of his class in fashion illustration and did that for quite a while, he said.
“I caught some of the last of the really great teachers who taught you how to draw figures, sketch, anatomy,” he explained, “not dreaming up art concepts and writing grants.”
Paintings of human anatomy are just the beginning. Sculpture, working in the third dimension of space is the equivalent of making hundreds, maybe even thousands of drawings that intersect the field of vision that makes it exist in three-dimensional space. Making a lump of clay look like something is one thing, but then imparting it with a sense of life not possible in two dimensions is part of the magic every sculptor yearns for.
And then, taking that sculptural piece of clay through the process of casting and finishing is a whole part of the process often overlooked by the casual observer.
The success of a piece, Gonzales said, often will rest on how skillful the casting is.
Early on in his professional art career, Gonzales said he realized it was going to take full emersion to become really good at the work.
After a life changing experience, he moved to Santa Fe and got a job at a foundry talked to lots of artists.
“I went about the business of finding out how the work is done and see how other people handle problems
He learned how to cast his own pieces, doing every part of the process from conception to applying the acid baths that give bronze sculpture its finish.
Now, he lets someone else cast his work, but it’s been hard. He admits to being somewhat of a control freak but also knows that he can only do so much and eventually he’d have to let go. It’s hard to turn over the process to someone else but he needs to make art, he said, not spend time casting.
“It’s really tough. But when it comes down to it I have to make that choice of whether I get to create or get tied down in the tedious work of casting,” he said.
He gets his pieces cast now at Art Castings up in Loveland, Colo.
“Many of the people working there have been working for the company for 20 years. I trust them. The more I get into the business the more important it is for me to be sculptor than it is for me to do everything,” he said.
Besides the tremendous body of work he already can claim, he is on the board of the Contemporary Spanish Market in Santa Fe and he has found he just can’t help being a bit of an art activist as well.
When he lived in Santa Fe, he explained that his drawing group was able to raise a fair amount of money to buy art paper for children in the schools there.
“I turned our drawing show into a fundraiser’s largest contributor. The organization was able to deliver two pallets of drawing paper for 18 elementary schools in Santa Fe.
For Gonzales, art is almost like a higher calling. If he not making something he said he gets anxious and jittery
“I feel I almost don’t have a choice. I could have been an engineer, and even when I was illustrating, it was fun at the beginning but it got old after a while.
Being a sculptor was something that was a result from a life-changing injury. This was during the time he lived in the Bolder, Colo., area.
I really liked Boulder. It is a wonderful place, but I burnt out doing illustration so I started working in a hardware store, moved up the ladder made so-so money, but I had made more as an illustrator. I quit the hardware job and started working in a job that involved working with explosives. I got into a serious car accident – a head-on collision. I thank God I was driving a Saab. I ended up with a closed head injury that put me out of commission for several months had amnesia,” he recounted
He forgot everything, he explained and when he was going to a cognitive therapist, she suggested he take up sculpture.
“The therapist said, ‘you’re an artist — you have a sculptor’s brain,’ but hadn’t really done much in the way of sculpting before. She sent him home with an assignment to sculpt something and I got hooked. I guess I must have cashed in eight of my nine lives.,” he said. Had I been driving any other car I would have died so I decided I would use my second chance and stop running from art.
“I live to create. From boyhood on, I was always scribbling. By second grade, I was sent to the principal’s office for drawing nude sketches of my teacher while she was at the chalkboard. It was her movement that fascinated me. When we are alive, we are never standing still. I draw every day of my life. Drawing is the beginning of all art. The beauty of the human form awes me. I cannot imagine a more perfect design,” he said.
His love of the figure is movingly expressed in his work, which harnesses light and shadow in powerful compositions. With neither a back nor front, his work is meant to be enjoyed from all angles, as he says, “to expose the harmonies of form that reveal the body’s perfect design.”
Where can you see the work of Matthew Gonzales?
Wilder Nightingale Fine Art
119-A Kit Carson Road
575-758-3255
http://www.wnightingale.com/
and on the artist’s web site:
http://www.gonzalesart.com
