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Hübschmann, A Survey of his Works, part 1B -
Davood Roostaei -
Miao Xiaochun – Macromania -
Grenoble Museum and General Beylie
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Airbrush from Hawaii 08 Jan. 2010
Interview with the Hawaiian artist Dennis Mathewson.
(Davood Khazaie): Mr. Dennis Mathewson, could you please tell us about your biography, when and where you were born and the parts related to your artistic career.
(Dennis Mathewson): I was born in Michigan, and then moved to Las Vegas at the age of ten and then left Las Vegas at the age of 20-22 years and I have lived in Hawaii since. I am currently 52 years old. I`ve been an artist, I consider my entire life, as far back as I can remember, from a small child to adulthood. My career has always been art it`s the only thing I have ever done for a living, as far as work goes. I began in grade school, using my artistic talent in supplying the school with posters, drawings and banners for the football team as well as other various events. Some of my other friends might have been a musician or the sports athlete, I was always the artist. After high school, I got a job working for Big Daddy Rat (Karl Smith), an American that was known for his artwork of monster cars and these big animated figures of Fords, Chevys and many exaggerated looking race cars. At the age of fourteen I began going to many car shows and at fifteen years old and I was hired to color in the designs. The customers would purchase a T-shirt and they would print a black outlined image on it and they would then give it to me to airbrush the color it in for 50 cents US and so it was my beginning days, that was using my first airbrush. I got my first airbrush when I was fourteen. Back then, there was very little knowledge of it, no teaching, no instructions, so I began to teach myself. From that point, I got a job at the University of Las Vegas, ULNV as an art director, right out of high school, no college education, but I actually was on staff for the university. So I gained much knowledge for graphic arts.
I also had a small shop when I did automotive painting and signage, being in Las Vegas, at the time, the sign capital of the world, billboards, you know Las Vegas is famous for that. The market for airbrush and automated painting wasn`t big where signage was a big part of it so I canvassed door to door trying to get some work, asking; “Would you like your shirt airbrushed” or “Do you need some signs for your business?” I left Las Vegas and went to Florida and airbrushed shirts again. There, I would airbrush up to a hundred shirts in an evening, I was very skilled and very fast. I then went to Hawaii with these skills. In 1980, I had 7 stores and 35 artists working for me. It became quite common in Hawaii for tourists and vacationers to come and order a beach scenery, as part of their souvenir items. Along with it, I still continued automotive painting and things like that. This is known as commercial art. I got a good reputation by that, I would say by year 2005 I probably was considered one of the top custom painters in the nation and many companies like Anest-Iwata and ALSA Corp. as well as other Paint and Airbrush manufacturers recognized me and I became part of their industry.
So, I got much magazine recognition from many different magazines. At that time I was also I teaching and instructing workshops for magazine, paint and airbrush companies. Back home in Hawaii, I still do automotive painting but no longer paint T-shirts. For the past couple of years my fine artwork has become highly successful for the galleries. I have two main galleries, Diamond Head Gallery located in Waikiki and Lahaina, Maui, which are major tourist areas and then I have five retail locations, smaller gallery shops that sell my work as well. In the last two years I`ve sold over 130 original works and thousands of prints. The majority of my work is painted on hand grinded metals, canvas and limited editions. I`m happy with the way my art career has taken me all of these years, doing more fine art and less automotive painting.
(D.Kh): and no T-shirts. (laughs)
(D.M.): That`s right, but that is all behind me, it was my learning tool.
(D.Kh): So after nearly 40 years, it is expected to be so. I would call it a kind of Odyssey-like transition. How about the possible influence of your parents?
(D.M.): There are two types of artists I feel, one that can be taught, go to school and learn the process of art and become very skilled, and there is another type of artist that basically contains a passion, almost like a curse. I am the second type of artist, I just had to paint, no matter where. I still draw and create constantly, even when I am in an airplane. I can`t sit still. I need to create. My parents, neither one was artistic. My father deliberately encouraged it and my mother was always very proud. There wasn`t anything they could contribute other than say, “That`s very nice.”
(D.Kh): Could you tell us more about the influence of sea on your work, since you were born in a coastal area and now you live in an Island.
(D.M.): In all of my work where I live I like to tell stories, and as an artist I see things differently. Here in Germany, there was a funny thing in the class this weekend on Friday. I looked at the trees and told the students, “Did you notice that the leaves on the trees are all changing colors in three days, did they turn more yellow?” You see that`s the artist in me. So in my island culture, I see things in volcanoes, in lava. I see art in there. I see the creative side of it. What it could be. I see in the Tiki paintings I do with the sculptures, the woodman and all that. I see the people of Hawaii, different colors of them, different structures. People of Hawaii are from everywhere and we have a melting pot of different cultures. There are many Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Caucasians, Hawaiians, all kinds of ethnicities. So, I see those images in the Tikis that have the different people and in my painting they tell stories about their cultures, whether they`re fishing, playing cards, laughing, joking, you know just the regular life stuff. The other thing I do is the aquatic painting which is the underwater things, the jelly fish, the turtles, sea dragons. I try to find unique animals that haven`t been over-saturated and commercialized, like dolphins and whales. I mean if you look, you`ll see plenty of artists have done dolphins and whales. So the first thing I say is that these are the things that I don`t want to paint. I want to find my own identity. Find something that`s my own favorite and then I want to work with it. The first jelly fish painting I drew, it sold in the gallery in three days. And my originals of jelly fish will sell from anywhere from five thousand to forty thousand in US dollars . So when I can sell six thousand dollar painting in three days, I say HOM, I try another one. Since that, when in a half years ago I did that jelly fish and then I painted sixty and I sold every single one of them. So taking one animal and trying to do sixty versions of it, you really become more creative. Because you are given a different twist, you find different animals. Now I go to an aquarium and I see jelly fish and see different things in him. More deeper I find new things inside more detailed than I had seen before. I can still create from him.
(D.Kh): And just taking the example of jelly fish. Do you study them biologically when you want to paint them?
(D.M.): Yah, the different breeds and types and where these types are from, this is in cold water, this is in warm water, I`ve learned a lot about them just because I like to study the details, what`s the membrane, where is the brain, look at the jelly fish, an alien type creature.
(D.Kh): Apart from the turtles I see the see-horses. How about them?
(D.M.): Yes, I like the see horses. I also like the sea-dragons which have a leafy pattern, I like the sea flow in them and you can see how the whole pattern will flow with the flow of the painting, like water.
(D.Kh): How about the Tikis? Why are you so interested in them?
(D.M.): Because they are in our community, they are part of our culture. I try to identify myself to the surrounding around me. I look at the eagle, wolf, I don’t live there but I see the Tikis there, I study them in the museum, I found out how the creators of the tikis are, what they mean, what the headdress means, the way they structure, the way they stand is a wrestling stand, and most people don’t know little details like this because they just see the tiki. But in early Polynesia, the biggest sport was wrestling. So a lot of tikis take aggressive stands like a wrestling man. Now you know that when you see them you say Ha! I see what they are doing, their chin structure sticks out as if they say AHH! (in an aggressive way). Some are aggressive, some are happy, and some are tranquil. I give all the different expressions in them. But I still stay inside the boundaries of the original creators of the art, and am interested in the traditional styles, in the structure.
(D.Kh): And the tikis themselves, are they modernized or still Bohemian these days?
(D.M.): Well, before there was written word and paint, there was sculpture. So Polynesian form was wood, they represented gods, animals, family protectors. Aumakua in Hawaii they were called. Aumakua is a kind of guardian spirit or dead ancestor’s spirit which takes another form, a dolphin or shark for instance and some of the Hawaiians believe that when they were lost they were guided by a dolphin or shark to a safe place. That might be the family protector of that family, a legacy or they were protected by, say the shark. So they would create a tiki representing the shark and that would be in their household. Tikis are wood structures they don’t really live, they are just statues, but they are there and are usually more on key chains, on tourist items and things like that but truly in the museums in Hawaii there are 150 or so original tikis still in existence but many of them were eroded away and dissolved.
(D.Kh): Could you tell us about the origin of the term “tiki”?
(D.M.): Tiki comes from earlier history in the Marquesas or New Zealand and the term tiki meant original man so like in Christianity we would say Adam. So in Polynesia they say tiki was the first man and there are tiki woman as well, representation of women tikis and representations of gods and representation of different images and protectors. So all these sculptures are tiki. In 1960s the tikis became a trendy surfer kind of a cool thing and so you started to see them stylized in cartoons, hippie, hip hop kind of cool thing image tikis. Now they come back. If you were to go to Hawaii today, You would see tikis in a restaurant, place matt, you would see them on coffee box. You would see them on a logo for a business. So tiki becomes a classic form of representation of Hawaii. If they don’t live in flesh and blood, they live in my paintings. I take these statues and I give them life.
(D.Kh): Is there a mythological system related to tikis as what we have, for instance, in Greek mythology?
(D.M.): Yes, yes very similar. There are the four main gods which are Kāne, Kanaloa, Kū, and Lono and sublevel gods, they are just the protectors. So it is ancient. When tourists see the tikis, they do not understand the actual traditional deep meaning, but we normally do not tell them, we just say yes, that’s a tiki.
(D.Kh): Is there anything that separates you from art, based on what I understand up to now art is attached to you always. Is there something very special which detaches you from art? I mean sometimes artists want to escape from their art. How is the case with you?
(D.M.): I do some fishing and also cooking. But these activities though they are not basically artistic, yet need creativity.
(D.Kh): Would you like to tell us something about your family, if it is related to your art in any sense?
(D.M.): I have been married to my wife, Susan for 25 years and my daughter, Indigo is a teenager, soon to be graduating from high school. I chose her name, Indigo because it is an organic color and it is also a color seen in a rainbow.
(D.Kh): Suppose somebody comes to your gallery but he cannot afford a painting yet he still likes to take something with himself or herself, what do you have to offer to such a person. He or she can only enter the gallery, see some works and leave.
(D.M.): I think I want that person to remember the identity of my work, so that when he sees my artwork somewhere else, he will say, “yes I know that this is Mathewson’s work”.
(D.Kh): Now please tell us more about your current work, Cosmic Airbrush.
(D.M.): Cosmic Airbrush is my business, name of my store, my facility and there I have my equipments, my spray drugs and I have a staff. They help me with my projects and there we paint a lot of what we call kustom paint which is kustom motorcycles, kustom automobiles. All are painted with our work.
(D.Kh): And sometimes your staff do it.
(D.M.): Yah, I also work with them. We work together as a team there. They may prepare it. They may be part of the work. They may finish it. Everything we do, we do as a team.
(D.Kh): And technically speaking, I mean with airbrushing, have you tried to add something to airbrushing? I mean suppose we ask a classic artist in Renaissance period, he could say I created this technique or this color, whatever. How about your achievement in this area, apart from your other considerable achievements?
(D.M.): Yes, actually I was contacted by one of the solvent-based paint companies (ALSA Corp.) that make automated paints and I created an entire color line. I’ve been known for many years for my colors. That my colors are very bright in my painting. I don’t use the color just out of the tube or right out of the can. I’ve always adjusted it to my liking and so one paint company noticed this and said “Would you make these colors for us?” and we did it. I went to Los Angeles, California and I went down to the laboratory for about a month and mixed all my colors and they called them “Dennis Mathewson Hawaiian Hues.” Their names are like lava orange, fiery red and tropical purple. But the colors that I mixed in the automated work for years and we used them to do kustom paint and it’s not really the best paint to do this type of work for an artist. In fine art we have better grains of pigment and so I was able to go and create an automated paint line, designed for the airbrusher, strictly for the kustom painting airbrusher. I took all the pigments and made them richer. It’s actually a great product. Yah I made my niche. Also I think out of all the things I’ve done in my life, in my work for some reasons my bubbles have become so popular that people just see the bubbles and just go WOW! I guess I’ve become the bubble-king, a bubble template called Bubble F/X created by Artool that other artists are gonna be able to use. Artool already makes Tiki templates I created as well. You know when something is popular people work with it.
(D.Kh): Mostly the simplest questions are the most difficult ones. And also the most difficult questions are related to definitions. Can you define “art” in your own view?
(D.M.): Ok. Simple question, simple answer. Creating.
(D.Kh): Yah, I do agree.
(D.M.): Art is creating.
(D.Kh): When I taught to my students I told them very often the same thing that art is creating but by using different media. In other words, a poet creates by words, an artist by color and a sculptor by stone or wood or any other stuff. So the whole thing is the unity of art, they are all one. The difference is in the material which is used.
(D.M.): I feel creating inside the color and I teach in my workshops to people that are learning from me and I’m showing them how to, not create, I’m showing them how to apply, how to do a technique. We say creating, the expression of one in their colors, the ability, think, to express something in emotion in art, it could be something that disturbs a person or makes some, feel uncomfortable. I feel that’s an achievement in art. I also thing that’s creating. Also the beauty, people have an emotion that, this is beautiful, makes me feel relaxed to look at this. I think any artist that can capture that type of emotion out of a person, that’s true art.
(D.Kh): And apart from all this. Is there anything particular you want to add about your art to our viewers. Suppose somebody comes to our website and wants to be familiar with you for the first time. How would you like to introduce yourself briefly. For example, I myself was not familiar with you and your work. I got familiar with you two days ago. Definitely it was a privilege for me to be familiar with your work.
(D.M.): I am an artist, I come from a special place which is Hawaii, which is a unique place, in the sense of being an island in the middle of pacific ocean. It’s halfway between Japan and the United States, so we are not so much America in that sense. I come from a special place. They have their own people, their own language, their own music, their own food, they have their own identity. So I’m an artist that comes from that environment. I like to create and I like to paint the island life style that I live in. And so that’s the work I try to do. So if you ever been to Hawaii, you’ll see Hawaii and my work.
(D.Kh): Thank you very much Mr. Mathewson for your time.
(D.M.): Thank you, too.
Global Art Magazine thanks Mr. Denis Mathewson. The interview was conducted in Hamburg, fall of 2009.
For further information:
Dennis Mathewson - Fine Art Sales
Dennis Mathewson - Custom Painting
(Davood Khazaie): Mr. Dennis Mathewson, could you please tell us about your biography, when and where you were born and the parts related to your artistic career.
(Dennis Mathewson): I was born in Michigan, and then moved to Las Vegas at the age of ten and then left Las Vegas at the age of 20-22 years and I have lived in Hawaii since. I am currently 52 years old. I`ve been an artist, I consider my entire life, as far back as I can remember, from a small child to adulthood. My career has always been art it`s the only thing I have ever done for a living, as far as work goes. I began in grade school, using my artistic talent in supplying the school with posters, drawings and banners for the football team as well as other various events. Some of my other friends might have been a musician or the sports athlete, I was always the artist. After high school, I got a job working for Big Daddy Rat (Karl Smith), an American that was known for his artwork of monster cars and these big animated figures of Fords, Chevys and many exaggerated looking race cars. At the age of fourteen I began going to many car shows and at fifteen years old and I was hired to color in the designs. The customers would purchase a T-shirt and they would print a black outlined image on it and they would then give it to me to airbrush the color it in for 50 cents US and so it was my beginning days, that was using my first airbrush. I got my first airbrush when I was fourteen. Back then, there was very little knowledge of it, no teaching, no instructions, so I began to teach myself. From that point, I got a job at the University of Las Vegas, ULNV as an art director, right out of high school, no college education, but I actually was on staff for the university. So I gained much knowledge for graphic arts.
I also had a small shop when I did automotive painting and signage, being in Las Vegas, at the time, the sign capital of the world, billboards, you know Las Vegas is famous for that. The market for airbrush and automated painting wasn`t big where signage was a big part of it so I canvassed door to door trying to get some work, asking; “Would you like your shirt airbrushed” or “Do you need some signs for your business?” I left Las Vegas and went to Florida and airbrushed shirts again. There, I would airbrush up to a hundred shirts in an evening, I was very skilled and very fast. I then went to Hawaii with these skills. In 1980, I had 7 stores and 35 artists working for me. It became quite common in Hawaii for tourists and vacationers to come and order a beach scenery, as part of their souvenir items. Along with it, I still continued automotive painting and things like that. This is known as commercial art. I got a good reputation by that, I would say by year 2005 I probably was considered one of the top custom painters in the nation and many companies like Anest-Iwata and ALSA Corp. as well as other Paint and Airbrush manufacturers recognized me and I became part of their industry.
So, I got much magazine recognition from many different magazines. At that time I was also I teaching and instructing workshops for magazine, paint and airbrush companies. Back home in Hawaii, I still do automotive painting but no longer paint T-shirts. For the past couple of years my fine artwork has become highly successful for the galleries. I have two main galleries, Diamond Head Gallery located in Waikiki and Lahaina, Maui, which are major tourist areas and then I have five retail locations, smaller gallery shops that sell my work as well. In the last two years I`ve sold over 130 original works and thousands of prints. The majority of my work is painted on hand grinded metals, canvas and limited editions. I`m happy with the way my art career has taken me all of these years, doing more fine art and less automotive painting.
(D.Kh): and no T-shirts. (laughs)
(D.M.): That`s right, but that is all behind me, it was my learning tool.
(D.Kh): So after nearly 40 years, it is expected to be so. I would call it a kind of Odyssey-like transition. How about the possible influence of your parents?
(D.M.): There are two types of artists I feel, one that can be taught, go to school and learn the process of art and become very skilled, and there is another type of artist that basically contains a passion, almost like a curse. I am the second type of artist, I just had to paint, no matter where. I still draw and create constantly, even when I am in an airplane. I can`t sit still. I need to create. My parents, neither one was artistic. My father deliberately encouraged it and my mother was always very proud. There wasn`t anything they could contribute other than say, “That`s very nice.”
(D.Kh): Could you tell us more about the influence of sea on your work, since you were born in a coastal area and now you live in an Island.
(D.M.): In all of my work where I live I like to tell stories, and as an artist I see things differently. Here in Germany, there was a funny thing in the class this weekend on Friday. I looked at the trees and told the students, “Did you notice that the leaves on the trees are all changing colors in three days, did they turn more yellow?” You see that`s the artist in me. So in my island culture, I see things in volcanoes, in lava. I see art in there. I see the creative side of it. What it could be. I see in the Tiki paintings I do with the sculptures, the woodman and all that. I see the people of Hawaii, different colors of them, different structures. People of Hawaii are from everywhere and we have a melting pot of different cultures. There are many Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Caucasians, Hawaiians, all kinds of ethnicities. So, I see those images in the Tikis that have the different people and in my painting they tell stories about their cultures, whether they`re fishing, playing cards, laughing, joking, you know just the regular life stuff. The other thing I do is the aquatic painting which is the underwater things, the jelly fish, the turtles, sea dragons. I try to find unique animals that haven`t been over-saturated and commercialized, like dolphins and whales. I mean if you look, you`ll see plenty of artists have done dolphins and whales. So the first thing I say is that these are the things that I don`t want to paint. I want to find my own identity. Find something that`s my own favorite and then I want to work with it. The first jelly fish painting I drew, it sold in the gallery in three days. And my originals of jelly fish will sell from anywhere from five thousand to forty thousand in US dollars . So when I can sell six thousand dollar painting in three days, I say HOM, I try another one. Since that, when in a half years ago I did that jelly fish and then I painted sixty and I sold every single one of them. So taking one animal and trying to do sixty versions of it, you really become more creative. Because you are given a different twist, you find different animals. Now I go to an aquarium and I see jelly fish and see different things in him. More deeper I find new things inside more detailed than I had seen before. I can still create from him.
(D.Kh): And just taking the example of jelly fish. Do you study them biologically when you want to paint them?
(D.M.): Yah, the different breeds and types and where these types are from, this is in cold water, this is in warm water, I`ve learned a lot about them just because I like to study the details, what`s the membrane, where is the brain, look at the jelly fish, an alien type creature.
(D.Kh): Apart from the turtles I see the see-horses. How about them?
(D.M.): Yes, I like the see horses. I also like the sea-dragons which have a leafy pattern, I like the sea flow in them and you can see how the whole pattern will flow with the flow of the painting, like water.
(D.Kh): How about the Tikis? Why are you so interested in them?
(D.M.): Because they are in our community, they are part of our culture. I try to identify myself to the surrounding around me. I look at the eagle, wolf, I don’t live there but I see the Tikis there, I study them in the museum, I found out how the creators of the tikis are, what they mean, what the headdress means, the way they structure, the way they stand is a wrestling stand, and most people don’t know little details like this because they just see the tiki. But in early Polynesia, the biggest sport was wrestling. So a lot of tikis take aggressive stands like a wrestling man. Now you know that when you see them you say Ha! I see what they are doing, their chin structure sticks out as if they say AHH! (in an aggressive way). Some are aggressive, some are happy, and some are tranquil. I give all the different expressions in them. But I still stay inside the boundaries of the original creators of the art, and am interested in the traditional styles, in the structure.
(D.Kh): And the tikis themselves, are they modernized or still Bohemian these days?
(D.M.): Well, before there was written word and paint, there was sculpture. So Polynesian form was wood, they represented gods, animals, family protectors. Aumakua in Hawaii they were called. Aumakua is a kind of guardian spirit or dead ancestor’s spirit which takes another form, a dolphin or shark for instance and some of the Hawaiians believe that when they were lost they were guided by a dolphin or shark to a safe place. That might be the family protector of that family, a legacy or they were protected by, say the shark. So they would create a tiki representing the shark and that would be in their household. Tikis are wood structures they don’t really live, they are just statues, but they are there and are usually more on key chains, on tourist items and things like that but truly in the museums in Hawaii there are 150 or so original tikis still in existence but many of them were eroded away and dissolved.
(D.Kh): Could you tell us about the origin of the term “tiki”?
(D.M.): Tiki comes from earlier history in the Marquesas or New Zealand and the term tiki meant original man so like in Christianity we would say Adam. So in Polynesia they say tiki was the first man and there are tiki woman as well, representation of women tikis and representations of gods and representation of different images and protectors. So all these sculptures are tiki. In 1960s the tikis became a trendy surfer kind of a cool thing and so you started to see them stylized in cartoons, hippie, hip hop kind of cool thing image tikis. Now they come back. If you were to go to Hawaii today, You would see tikis in a restaurant, place matt, you would see them on coffee box. You would see them on a logo for a business. So tiki becomes a classic form of representation of Hawaii. If they don’t live in flesh and blood, they live in my paintings. I take these statues and I give them life.
(D.Kh): Is there a mythological system related to tikis as what we have, for instance, in Greek mythology?
(D.M.): Yes, yes very similar. There are the four main gods which are Kāne, Kanaloa, Kū, and Lono and sublevel gods, they are just the protectors. So it is ancient. When tourists see the tikis, they do not understand the actual traditional deep meaning, but we normally do not tell them, we just say yes, that’s a tiki.
(D.Kh): Is there anything that separates you from art, based on what I understand up to now art is attached to you always. Is there something very special which detaches you from art? I mean sometimes artists want to escape from their art. How is the case with you?
(D.M.): I do some fishing and also cooking. But these activities though they are not basically artistic, yet need creativity.
(D.Kh): Would you like to tell us something about your family, if it is related to your art in any sense?
(D.M.): I have been married to my wife, Susan for 25 years and my daughter, Indigo is a teenager, soon to be graduating from high school. I chose her name, Indigo because it is an organic color and it is also a color seen in a rainbow.
(D.Kh): Suppose somebody comes to your gallery but he cannot afford a painting yet he still likes to take something with himself or herself, what do you have to offer to such a person. He or she can only enter the gallery, see some works and leave.
(D.M.): I think I want that person to remember the identity of my work, so that when he sees my artwork somewhere else, he will say, “yes I know that this is Mathewson’s work”.
(D.Kh): Now please tell us more about your current work, Cosmic Airbrush.
(D.M.): Cosmic Airbrush is my business, name of my store, my facility and there I have my equipments, my spray drugs and I have a staff. They help me with my projects and there we paint a lot of what we call kustom paint which is kustom motorcycles, kustom automobiles. All are painted with our work.
(D.Kh): And sometimes your staff do it.
(D.M.): Yah, I also work with them. We work together as a team there. They may prepare it. They may be part of the work. They may finish it. Everything we do, we do as a team.
(D.Kh): And technically speaking, I mean with airbrushing, have you tried to add something to airbrushing? I mean suppose we ask a classic artist in Renaissance period, he could say I created this technique or this color, whatever. How about your achievement in this area, apart from your other considerable achievements?
(D.M.): Yes, actually I was contacted by one of the solvent-based paint companies (ALSA Corp.) that make automated paints and I created an entire color line. I’ve been known for many years for my colors. That my colors are very bright in my painting. I don’t use the color just out of the tube or right out of the can. I’ve always adjusted it to my liking and so one paint company noticed this and said “Would you make these colors for us?” and we did it. I went to Los Angeles, California and I went down to the laboratory for about a month and mixed all my colors and they called them “Dennis Mathewson Hawaiian Hues.” Their names are like lava orange, fiery red and tropical purple. But the colors that I mixed in the automated work for years and we used them to do kustom paint and it’s not really the best paint to do this type of work for an artist. In fine art we have better grains of pigment and so I was able to go and create an automated paint line, designed for the airbrusher, strictly for the kustom painting airbrusher. I took all the pigments and made them richer. It’s actually a great product. Yah I made my niche. Also I think out of all the things I’ve done in my life, in my work for some reasons my bubbles have become so popular that people just see the bubbles and just go WOW! I guess I’ve become the bubble-king, a bubble template called Bubble F/X created by Artool that other artists are gonna be able to use. Artool already makes Tiki templates I created as well. You know when something is popular people work with it.
(D.Kh): Mostly the simplest questions are the most difficult ones. And also the most difficult questions are related to definitions. Can you define “art” in your own view?
(D.M.): Ok. Simple question, simple answer. Creating.
(D.Kh): Yah, I do agree.
(D.M.): Art is creating.
(D.Kh): When I taught to my students I told them very often the same thing that art is creating but by using different media. In other words, a poet creates by words, an artist by color and a sculptor by stone or wood or any other stuff. So the whole thing is the unity of art, they are all one. The difference is in the material which is used.
(D.M.): I feel creating inside the color and I teach in my workshops to people that are learning from me and I’m showing them how to, not create, I’m showing them how to apply, how to do a technique. We say creating, the expression of one in their colors, the ability, think, to express something in emotion in art, it could be something that disturbs a person or makes some, feel uncomfortable. I feel that’s an achievement in art. I also thing that’s creating. Also the beauty, people have an emotion that, this is beautiful, makes me feel relaxed to look at this. I think any artist that can capture that type of emotion out of a person, that’s true art.
(D.Kh): And apart from all this. Is there anything particular you want to add about your art to our viewers. Suppose somebody comes to our website and wants to be familiar with you for the first time. How would you like to introduce yourself briefly. For example, I myself was not familiar with you and your work. I got familiar with you two days ago. Definitely it was a privilege for me to be familiar with your work.
(D.M.): I am an artist, I come from a special place which is Hawaii, which is a unique place, in the sense of being an island in the middle of pacific ocean. It’s halfway between Japan and the United States, so we are not so much America in that sense. I come from a special place. They have their own people, their own language, their own music, their own food, they have their own identity. So I’m an artist that comes from that environment. I like to create and I like to paint the island life style that I live in. And so that’s the work I try to do. So if you ever been to Hawaii, you’ll see Hawaii and my work.
(D.Kh): Thank you very much Mr. Mathewson for your time.
(D.M.): Thank you, too.
Global Art Magazine thanks Mr. Denis Mathewson. The interview was conducted in Hamburg, fall of 2009.
For further information:
Dennis Mathewson - Fine Art Sales
Dennis Mathewson - Custom Painting
