Matthew Dennison was born and raised in Portland Oregon. He began painting, drawing and carving as a child and briefly attended the Pacific NW College of Art. He has a self imposed discipline of drawing and writing poems each day, rituals that contribute to his creative process.

His work employs a refined method in which his gloved hands, rags and masking tape upstage brushes as his primary tools creating sharply defined regions of bright color and surfaces.

His paintings are generally narrative scenes that often include the natural world and dignified portraits of animals, which exude a palpable spark of intelligence. The paintings are an extension of his love for the beauty in imperfection, a wonderfully skewed reimagining of a contemporary ideal.
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One interest of mine is the placelessness” created by our society – homogenous locations such as big box retail stores and malls that are so culturally nonspecific that they could be anywhere. While not depicting specific individuals, I compile interesting or odd characteristics that I see on a daily basis. I am interested in the isolation created by technology.

My work explores the patterns unfolding in our culture and the impact we have on the Planet. It is about the human race neglecting to understand our connection to living things and what feels like our lack of interest in protecting the planet.

I am concerned with connectivity and the paradox of orientation in our world and how these issues are threaded into our daily lives.I hope my work creates a conversation perhaps on the fragility of the world around us and the beauty contained there. My intent is to point people back to the natural world reminding us that we are connected to this place and land, and that we are a thread in these layers of life around us.

We live in untenable times, and for me paintings have become words, their narrative documents an uncontrolled society. I map ideas together to create another way of seeing the moment. My goal is to bring remote elements to the surface of each painting; highlighting sections in a larger text. I tie current histories and personal events together.