About Caia Matheson
Caia Matheson is an Award Winning Contemporary British Painter based in the United Kingdom Caia Matheson was born in Johannesburg and educated in Tokyo and London Caia Matheson has exhibited alongside Billy Childish Jamie Reid Yohji Yamamoto Sir Paul McCartney Chris Riddell David Lloyd Guy Venables Finalist Connect2Colour Summer Arts Prize London 2015 Painted Europe’s first Rainbow Pedestrian Crossing Brighton 2014 Painting selected by author Neil Gaiman for book A Calendar of Tales 2013 Winner Brighton Artist of the Year UK 2004 Nominated for the Ambassadors Art Prize Belgium 2005 Nominated for the Women’s Art Show Basingstoke UK 2005 Short listed for the Brighton Festival Art Prize UK 2004 INSPIRATION AND PROCESS My work is about words and verse from all sources such as radio plays audio books stories song lyrics and poetry. I get such great pictures from words and translate them into my work as a visual narrative.
I am inspired by wabi sabi or the beauty of imperfection. I love to mix paint mediums and experiment with the effects. This can be the most exciting part of the creative process. I paint with my hands and household sponges onto canvases laid flat on the floor. I begin painting with a specific colour that I have in my mind’s eye then I introduce other colours and begin to build layers on the canvas.
These layers are then scratched off and layered over again like a palimpsest literally meaning scraped clean and used again. I love the idea of previous markings that are not visible but are still an inherent part of the composition. The subjects in the layers are buried in the dark and light spaces and come out and disappear as the light changes presenting different aspects depending on shifting light conditions and mood. I consider each successive layer a generation to populate or depopulate the canvas as needed and create my own world as I go. I like to create a world within worlds.
As a kid I used to be fascinated by the Lowly worm in the Richard Scarry books. I loved scouring each page to seek out that worm and when I found it I would feel most content like I had discovered a piece of secret truth that would uncover all the answers to my questions about the universe. There are some Lowly worms in my abstracts albeit in symbolic form.
