MPM: Outside of color and design, the primary feature of your work is texture, specifically your utilization of tiny ‘beads’ of paint. Can you talk a bit about how you arrived at this? Are these painted directly on the surface?
EH: I’m fascinated by texture because it characterizes paintings as objects, apart from painting’s imagistic nature. I often think about the “skin” of paintings: the layer of paint on the support and how thick or thin the skin is; how it is built up and how it reveals (or obscures) previous layers and/or the support. Most people look at paintings from far away, but I like to get up close and really gaze at the skin of my paintings. And I like to look closely at the skin of paintings that interest me. The skin of paint contains information about how the artist moved the brush and how the artist applied pressure. The skin of paint reveals mood, mindset, temperament - and intangible qualities that may be hard to express in words. the smooth skin of paintings by an artist such as Chason Matthams is a revelation into mindset and temperament.
Read the full interview at mepaintsme.substack.com.
