“My art is made up of hard lines and bold geometric figures, yet my paintings maintain a human, organic quality. Every detail of a piece is planned before I pick up a brush. As a painter of faces, this begins with determining the subject’s essence. Key features are highlighted to make each subject instantly recognizable, such as Johnny Cash’s snarl, along with the shapes that hide in the shadows of each person’s face. At first glance, the viewer will be drawn to the blocks and colors, but my art is really about light value. I paint with small brushes and oil paints, which look like water colors or stained glass when I’m finished. Up close, the individual shapes are all that can be seen, with their prismatic, shattered glass quality. But when viewed from a distance, the faces are no longer hidden by the rough, asymmetrical rhombuses and rectangles, and can be seen more clearly.”

Tom Matousek’s award winning artistic journey began with studying and drawing cartoons as a child. His talents quickly developed into a highly successful and meteoric rise to fame as a a prominent mural artist. Experimenting with portraits, Matousek developed a technique composing faces using sharp geometric forms. At first glance, his style appears to focus on individual shapes and colors, yet is truly more about light value causing the human eye to view his work in a way that manipulates the shapes and colors involuntarily to find a cohesive form.

Significant honors:

2010 Shellie Award for Theatrical Set Design

2013 Selected as Artist in Residence for the DDR Corporation

2013 and 2014 Featured Artist at the World’s Largest Chalk Festival in Pasadena, CA

2013 Featured Artist at Art Basel, Miami

2016 Became a Licensed Artist with Disney Fine Art

2017 Became a Licensed Artist with Chuck Jones Galleries

2018 Matousek’s portrait of Frederick Douglass selected as Official Logo for Bicentennial Celebration of Douglass by U.S. Government