Matthew Draper SSA VAS PS

Matthew Draper is an Edinburgh based Artist, who trained at Walsall College of Art and Falmouth College of Arts. Draper is influenced by the dramatic imagery of late eighteenth and nineteenth century painting. His landscapes are romantic in spirit, echoing the works of Casper David Friedrich and subliminal painters like Sanford Robinson Gifford and Frederic Edwin Church. These artists adopted the term ‘Luminism’, defined as light in the landscape and the effect that light has on the landscape.

Principally a draughtsman, working mainly in pastel, Draper's approach to landscape and cityscape involves a direct search for light amongst familiar surroundings. His ability to work on scale has seen him establish himself as one of the preeminent pastel artists in the UK.

Draper's large scale pastels are emotional reactions to events and experiences evolving in front of him; events happening or about to happen. The drawings drift between abstraction and realism, like fading memories or captured moments in time.