Solo Shows
02-09-2025 Sojourn Through Ambient Spaces – Forever Florida, St. Pete, FL
12-09-2024 Celestion – As You Like, Brooklyn, NY
11-18-2023 Of the Sea – As You Like, Brooklyn NY
Group shows
01-10-2025 The Mandala Project – Florida Craft Art, St. Pete FL
11-09-2024 Driftwood, St. Petersburg, FL
08-01-2024 Imagined Worlds – Atlantic Gallery, New York NY
05-02-2024 Superfine – 151 W 42nd St, New York NY
03-07-2024 Outsidr – Green Bench Brewing, St. Pete FL
03-07-2024 Nude Nite – St. Pete FL
03-01-2024 Right of Spring – The Werk, St. Pete FL
02-09-2024 Nude Nite – Orlando FL
02-07-2024 Every Picture Tells a Story – WADA, St. Pete FL
02-03-2024 All Things Florida – Five Deuces Galleria, St. Pete FL
01-13-2024 Artworks Open (juried) – St. Pete Artworks, St. Pete, FL
12-02-2023 Small Works – Five Deuces Galleria, St. Pete FL
11-11-2023 All Is Bright – The Morean Center for the Arts, St. Pete FL
04-08-2023 Kyoto Protocol – The Emerald, St. Pete FL
04-01-2023 All the Glitters – Bar 548, St. Pete FL
03-04-2023 Unreal Surreal – Five Deuces Galleria, St. Pete FL
01-21-2023 Sweet Death – House of Shadows, Tampa FL
12-16-2022 Joy to the Wayworld – The Factory, St. Pete FL
12-10-2022 White Art Party – Ekeko Gallery, St. Pete FL
12-03-2022 Small Works – Five Deuces Galleria, St. Pete FL
11-27-2022 Happy Art – Grounded Gallery, Gulfport FL
11-11-2022 Mushroom Jazz – The Factory, St. Pete FL
10-15-2022 Local Color – Greenpoint Art Circle at Cafe Grumpy, Brooklyn, NY
10-07-2022 Dia de los Muertos III – Atelier de Sosi, St. Pete, FL
08-13-2022 Near and Far – Warehouse Arts District, St. Pete, FL
03-12-2022 The Marine City – Church of the Ascension, Brooklyn NY
08-2014 Free Wine – Brooklyn, NY
03-2009 Seasick Mama – Brooklyn, NY
02-2008 Found in Brooklyn – Brooklyn, NY
2008 Square Foot Show, Election ‘08 – Art Gotham, New York NY
2007 Portrait of Success as a Young Failure – NYCAMS Gallery, New York NY
2006 Siblings – Layla Lounge, Brooklyn NY
2004 Sola Creo Project Creo – The Arts Center, St. Petersburg FL
2004 Doorways and Passages – One Tampa City Center, Tampa FL
2004 Project Creo – The Arts Center, St. Petersburg FL
2003 Milagro – Galla Corina Group Show, Tampa FL
2001 15-A – Mcintosh Cafe Group Show, Macintosh, FL
Published Work:
Illustrations, Reaper’s Milonga, YesYes Books (July 15, 2018)
May Day Poster Cover Image for the New York RAT Issue #3 2005
We’ll Be Dropping By Poster for the New York RAT Issue #2 2004
Various Illustration for the New York RAT Issue #1 2004
Various Illustration Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs – Curious George Brigade 2002
Professional Commissions:
All Molecules Light As Air, 2008, 5’x10’ oil on canvas / Iolo Technologies, Los Angeles CA
Artist Statement
“Sojourn Through Ambient Spaces”
In this series of paintings I ponder the intersection of self, city, and community, and the ways our environment can become intertwined in our identities. Situated in the foreground of these works are creatures carrying cities on their backs, which seem to morph into musical instruments, furniture, and other architectural elements.
I painted this body of work after a trip to Europe in May 2024 – visiting Berlin, Gdańsk, Warsaw, Kraków and Prague. Traveling by train and carrying a suitcase, wandering through pre-industrial old towns (stare miasto), and visiting museums housing collections of artists – some of which I’d discover for the first time – made a huge impact and temporarily changed my painting practice from a more abstract expression to the illustrative, surrealist vignettes on display here.
I have long been fascinated by the mid-twentieth century Situationist International, a movement drawn from Dada, Surrealism, and other literary philosophies – which called for “a moment of life concretely and deliberately constructed by the collective organization of a unitary ambience and a game of events.” Their concept of Dérive describes an experimental mode of navigating through urban spaces in order to break the fasçade of commodity/consumption-based activities.
This very art show is a perfect example – authentic gatherings of micro-communities based on art, poetry, and community. This body of work contains portraits of mobile city-walkers as they pause in this ambience, like traveling theater troupes or moving musical instruments.
Growing up here in St. Petersburg, and returning after living in a big city for 20 years, I often find myself walking through my own memories, and searching for the exact location of places long replaced by new construction. In this way, I carry those old places and the communities they once supported in the little ghost town of my memory. Thank you for taking your own sojourn through these works, my hope is that they might bring colorful wonder to your eyes, and give you an opportunity to think about what your own wandering city looks like.
– Matthew Boyle 2025
Bio
Florida/NYC-based painter and illustrator Matthew Boyle calls upon his education in architecture to create emotional immersive dreamscapes. Working primarily in oil, Matthew’s work draws a window into sublime landscapes of the mind, often illustrating parables of a post-apocalyptic world rising from the ashes of humankind’s greed and blind ambition.
As a child Matthew drew over old structural steel blueprints, and won the Festival of States sidewalk art contest in St. Petersburg. Graduating from St. Pete High’s IB program with a focus on visual arts, he went on to study architecture at the University of Florida where he became fascinated by the situationists, abstract concepts in art and architecture, and the urban landscape.
In 2001 he hopped a freight train to New York City and began a lifelong fascination with counter culture and city life. For 20 years Matthew created & showed work in NYC, eventually finding his way to education where he taught music, art, creative coding, and computer science in East Harlem. Currently working at Sixstar studios in the warehouse arts district of St. Pete, he now makes larger scale oil paintings and exhibits in both Florida and NYC.
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@matthewboyleart