Art-making As Something You Can Do Forever: Matt Neuman ‘03
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Vocation: Artist
Studio Location: Bronx, NY
Favorite VA tradition: Winter Carnival
Favorite VA teacher: Ms. Lisa McNealus ‘79
Matt Neuman ’03 is a full-time professional artist. He became a standout in Ms. McNealus’s studio art classroom and honed his passion through college. This distinguished alumnus received his first real recognition as a creative individual in 2003 at Vermont Academy with the Saxtons River Art Guild’s Promising Artist Scholarship. Following the completion of his MFA in 2012, Matt has been invited to exhibit work with galleries and dealers both at home and abroad. Most recently, in February of 2020 he was awarded a solo show at the reputable Long View Gallery in Washington, D.C. Ambitious and visually rich, the exhibit received accolades as part of a full-page review in The Washington Post. His work is now featured across galleries in Washington, D.C., Miami, Provincetown, New York City and Santa Fe. Students, faculty, staff and visitors are familiar with his work as his large painting “Coelacanth” welcomes people to the lobby of the Horowitz Performing Arts Hall.
Ms. McNealus ‘79 had a profound influence on Matt’s career focus. “Throughout most of my life, when people have talked about art or making art as a young person, it’s been as a hobby,” Matt explains. “Ms. McNealus allowed me to think this was a real thing I could do forever.” His time at Vermont Academy started to build a context for art-making that increased its importance in life, and the school worked with Matt to allow him to spend as much time in the studio as needed.
“Vermont Academy means ‘high school’ to me, which is a complicated and difficult time for kids,” says Matt. “It’s the place I learned to be independent and exist without my parents. I developed my sense of self there. It’s the place where I learned to value education and learn the impact of a good teacher on a student.” Vermont Academy prepared Matt well for Skidmore College, where he developed a lot of the technical skills he uses in his art today, and the college felt like an extension of his Vermont Academy education.
Matt’s art features concentric forms that put one shape inside of another. His work radiates with visual energy and uses pattern to make reference to the infinite. By design, a viewer is confronted by a great visual expanse where you must “come to grips with your own scale. That smallness can become visceral, like a weight in your gut. I want the effect to be humbling and physical.”
For Matt, simplicity leads to greater beauty, strength and depth. Featuring so few visual elements makes each element that much more relevant. In Matt’s own words, “fewer elements provide greater opportunities for transcendence.” Or, as Chloe Schama writes in Vogue, “When I think of Matt Neuman’s pieces they remind me of Zen gardens; they are works that help you enter a meditative state.”
Matt knows that as an artist, independence and autonomy lie at the core of his pursuit, fueled by the process of creating and iterating. Matt’s artistic process is crystallized by his strategy of simplifying. His philosophy centers on the idea that anything totally non-essential in the artwork becomes a distraction from whatever the artist is communicating. The takeaway is, “Through iteration, I can act and react in an endless feedback loop. I’ve come to understand that I can let the artwork guide me instead of forcing myself to guide the artwork. Let the artwork change the artist and don’t let the artist change the artwork. The former is a more successful recipe for growth.”
For Matt, this mantra remains a northstar and has paved the way for an illustrious and fulfilling career -- one that was born and encouraged at Vermont Academy.
You can see Matt’s work at his website found here: http://www.mattneumanartist.com/
Back
Vocation: Artist
Studio Location: Bronx, NY
Favorite VA tradition: Winter Carnival
Favorite VA teacher: Ms. Lisa McNealus ‘79
Matt Neuman ’03 is a full-time professional artist. He became a standout in Ms. McNealus’s studio art classroom and honed his passion through college. This distinguished alumnus received his first real recognition as a creative individual in 2003 at Vermont Academy with the Saxtons River Art Guild’s Promising Artist Scholarship. Following the completion of his MFA in 2012, Matt has been invited to exhibit work with galleries and dealers both at home and abroad. Most recently, in February of 2020 he was awarded a solo show at the reputable Long View Gallery in Washington, D.C. Ambitious and visually rich, the exhibit received accolades as part of a full-page review in The Washington Post. His work is now featured across galleries in Washington, D.C., Miami, Provincetown, New York City and Santa Fe. Students, faculty, staff and visitors are familiar with his work as his large painting “Coelacanth” welcomes people to the lobby of the Horowitz Performing Arts Hall.
Ms. McNealus ‘79 had a profound influence on Matt’s career focus. “Throughout most of my life, when people have talked about art or making art as a young person, it’s been as a hobby,” Matt explains. “Ms. McNealus allowed me to think this was a real thing I could do forever.” His time at Vermont Academy started to build a context for art-making that increased its importance in life, and the school worked with Matt to allow him to spend as much time in the studio as needed.
“Vermont Academy means ‘high school’ to me, which is a complicated and difficult time for kids,” says Matt. “It’s the place I learned to be independent and exist without my parents. I developed my sense of self there. It’s the place where I learned to value education and learn the impact of a good teacher on a student.” Vermont Academy prepared Matt well for Skidmore College, where he developed a lot of the technical skills he uses in his art today, and the college felt like an extension of his Vermont Academy education.
Matt’s art features concentric forms that put one shape inside of another. His work radiates with visual energy and uses pattern to make reference to the infinite. By design, a viewer is confronted by a great visual expanse where you must “come to grips with your own scale. That smallness can become visceral, like a weight in your gut. I want the effect to be humbling and physical.”
For Matt, simplicity leads to greater beauty, strength and depth. Featuring so few visual elements makes each element that much more relevant. In Matt’s own words, “fewer elements provide greater opportunities for transcendence.” Or, as Chloe Schama writes in Vogue, “When I think of Matt Neuman’s pieces they remind me of Zen gardens; they are works that help you enter a meditative state.”
Matt knows that as an artist, independence and autonomy lie at the core of his pursuit, fueled by the process of creating and iterating. Matt’s artistic process is crystallized by his strategy of simplifying. His philosophy centers on the idea that anything totally non-essential in the artwork becomes a distraction from whatever the artist is communicating. The takeaway is, “Through iteration, I can act and react in an endless feedback loop. I’ve come to understand that I can let the artwork guide me instead of forcing myself to guide the artwork. Let the artwork change the artist and don’t let the artist change the artwork. The former is a more successful recipe for growth.”
For Matt, this mantra remains a northstar and has paved the way for an illustrious and fulfilling career -- one that was born and encouraged at Vermont Academy.
You can see Matt’s work at his website found here: http://www.mattneumanartist.com/
Vermont Academy is a coed college preparatory boarding and day school in southern Vermont, serving grades 9-12 plus a postgraduate year.
