Matt Forster

Born in Oxford in 1975, MJ Forster is an established name in British landscape painting.

He studied at Newcastle College of Art and Design, before embarking on a Science degree. Painting and drawing remained at the core of his activity and upon graduation he quickly resumed his artistic career.

Following extremely successful solo shows in his now native North East England, he established his own gallery in the popular market town of Hexham in Northumberland where he exhibits and sells his work to a local and national audience.

Over the past ten years, interest and demand in Forster?s work has grown considerably in the UK. The artist has continued his artistic progression travelling extensively to develop his watercolour technique. Over a period of two years he lived, worked and exhibited his paintings in South East Asia, Mexico, Northern America and Canada eventually reaching the Arctic Circle before spending an intensive developmental period drawing and painting in Otago, New Zealand. Working Plein Air in these challenging yet inspiring locations has defined the way the artist has sought to find the very soul of the landscape.

Over recent years, Forster has developed a distinct style and technique associated with the medium of watercolour, reinvigorating what is traditionally perceived as a conventional medium. The work has an almost graphic quality, and contains a feeling of enhanced hyper reality, perhaps intimating something close to a utopian ideal. The fascination and inspiration for the paintings though, is deeply rooted in the artist?s immediate and wider environment, and in particular the unique and varied landscape of the British Isles.

Initially, Forster?s new work has a sense of perceived simplicity. The heightened colour values are realised by a time consuming exploration of the subject matter that eventually leads to a series of controlled watercolour washes empathetic to the screen-printing process. The methodical layering of the separate washes, applied dry on dry, allows the surface to open up a much broader palette. Forster likens the work to a sonnet in the sense that they are created within a restrictive framework and out of that limitation a greater creativity emerges. MJ Forster?s latest collection work, ?ERBRITAIN, expresses his observations and understandings of the British landscape. The artist captures his unique viewpoint through the medium of watercolour in sixteen locations ranging from the panoramic beauty of the Scottish Highlands to the isolatory grandeur of Dartmoor in a unique contemporary style referred to as ?erpainting.

EMAIL: info@mjforster.com

WEB: www.mjforster.com