Matt Bahen _ Lot # 19

Nicolas Metivier Gallery

Title: Patience of the Earth

About this piece: This work is from my body of work made around the exhibition “The promise the promise” exhibited in Nicolas Metivier gallery in 2019. I examined Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey and how story structure influences meaning. I broke his 12-part cycle into 4 parts. This work “the patience of the earth” is a representation of the first section of the cycle, the beginning.

Dimensions: 10" x 14"

Medium: Oil on canvas

Value: $6,000

Date: 2018

Matt is a Toronto based painter. He is known for his thick impasto paintings, which have many layers of interpretation. Influenced by literature, primarily the writings of fiction authors such as Cormac McCarthy, T.S Eliot, and Joseph Conrad, Bahen aspires to emulate the power of metaphors and allegories with paint. Bahen does not consider his subject landscape in the traditional sense; his viewpoint is not one that we see in nature but rather skirts the balance between real and imagined in a way that leaves the viewer to decipher. This inherent tension and uncertainty typifies his work.