Matthew Ronay

Your work, characterized by abstract forms and bright colours, creates an almost psychedelic atmosphere. How do you develop this aesthetic and what influences inform your visual approach?

Distressing combinations, erotic indulgences, and unexplainable decoys often appear at the onset of a journey into the unknown. It could be that an evolutionary response to danger causes us to become stimulated by keyed up hues and troubling juxtapositions. Even rubbing your eyes produces something intriguing. I have honed my ability to accept confusing imagery and to reject judging the vocabulary created by my meandering drawing practice.
Repeated purposeless image generation is integral to my practice, as is research of art history, science, spirituality, and history. Any image or phenomenon flashing before me that has that sticky quality usually warrants attention. These things vary, for example: Kitagawa Utamaro, Jean Hélion, decorative ironwork of Italy, World War II. Jim Jones, Samuel Johnson, Louis Henry Sullivan, Zeki Müren. Bodybuilders, meditation, tonsil stones, diverticulosis. Foujita, Finsterlin, Feingefühl, Fengyi. The visual result of these activities is sculpture. The intellectual result for the maker is enrichment and discovery. The spiritual result is a calming of anxiety.

You use a variety of materials, including wood, resin and paint. How do you choose each material and what is your relationship with it?

Materials do not interest me as a vector for transmitting meaning. In other artists work I enjoy materials, however in my own, my choice of material only serves the embodiment, technically, of the image. It’s very practical. I’ve logged many thousands of hours working in wood and can impose my will on it.

Can you describe your creative process, from the initial idea to the finished sculpture?

The process is a series of activities that perpetuate research and self soothing. My motivations are to observe, learn, and center myself by isolating and working intensively. I never start with an idea. I engage these activities:
research (book collecting, reading, interneting - Tumblr, Twitter, TikTok, Wikipedia, et al. - film watching, visiting exhibitions with friends, listening to music, discussion), meditation, repeated automatic drawing, editing collections of drawings, choosing drawings of heightened interest, projecting drawings to determine the proper size of a work, gluing together rough blocks of wood, sculpting wood, photographing work in progress, inventing parts of sculptures not defined by original drawings, choosing color, dyeing work, photographing work, research for titling, discovering possible meanings, rinse, repeat. •

in order of appearance: The Oblivion of Repose, Matthew Ronay, 2024, baswood, dye, shellac-based primer, plastic, steel, 54 x 109 x 30 cm • The Crack, the Swell,and Earth, an Ode, Matthew Ronay, 2022, baswoodn dye, gouache, flocking, plastic, steel, cotton, epoxy, HMA, pen, 721 x 95 x 33 cm • The Tombs Are Upset, Matthew Ronay, 2023, baswood, dye, gouache, primer, flocking, plastic, steel, epoxy, HMA, pen, 86 x 360 x 42 cm • The Tombs Are Upset, Matthew Ronay, 2023, baswood, dye, gouache, primer, flocking, plastic, steel, epoxy, HMA, pen, 86 x 360 x 42 cm • © courtesy of the artist and Perrotin