Matthew Wettlaufer
I grew up in Idyllwild, California, in the mountains of Southern California; my father was a sculptor and my mother, an English literature teacher. I have a master’s in psychology and a doctorate in Philosophy. I didn’t start to paint until I was living in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2005, when I was teaching a philosophy class at the University of Stellenbosch. I started taking informal classes three times a week from a trio of instructors: Jill Trappler, Paul Birchall, and Lynne Lymofsky. Almost at once I found myself painting like my favorite artists: the German expressionists, Fauvists, Futurists, and Cubists whose art I loved looking at since I was a child. At the same time I gravitated towards large political mural-like canvases with social justice and political themes, echoing the influence of the Mexican muralists and dealing with themes such as US involvement in Central America and LGBT history and struggle. I've delved into abstract work and have leaned into completely non-figurative painting and collage making over the last ten years. I've exhibited widely in South Africa and the US.
In 2010 I moved back to the United States and currently reside in California with my husband. When I'm not painting I enjoy reading books on physics and German philosophy, playing Bach, Hindemith, and Scriabin on piano, and taking care of our five cats.
Artist Statement
My work has been motivated by social justice, the desire for economic equality--an end to a world ruled by a few billionaires over the rest of us, a fierce opposition to fascism in all of its forms, a love and passion for science especially astrophysics, quantum field theory, and evolutionary biology, and a return to literature and political philosophy by people as varied as Hesse, Faulkner, Woolf, Joyce, Emma Goldman, Kropotkin, Marx, Noam Chomsky, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Herbert Marcuse from the Frankfurt School. I spent many years in the 1990s working in El Salvador in health care in the rural mountains of FMLN organized Chalatenango, and I was actively involved in LGBTQ rights activism with ACT-UP/San Francisco and Queer Nation during the middle of the AIDS crisis. I thought, as a child, that the world was going to become a better place for the persecuted, the poor, and the working class but today I believe this was wishful thinking--the world seems spell-bound and strangled by the greed of a handful of individuals who think nothing of driving the planet and all of us on it into extinction. While I have loved the use of color for its own sake, in terms of abstraction and non-representational art, I have made conscious effort to return to themes of social and economic justice, as an act of resistance. I want my work to be an archive against the whitewashing of working people's history around the world. My hope is to leave a body of work that can be an inspiration to others.
CV
Awards
2006—South African Society of Artists, Cape Town SA, Kirstenbosch Gardens Group Show; Prize for reverse glass painting.
Exhibitions
2026--Sasse Museum Catalog, "Art And Psychology," 4 paintings and 2 collages.
2026--Sasse Museum of Art Exhibition "References and Joy," month of March.
2024--Sasse Museum Catalog, "Tree Stories," painting of a Japanese cedar, Jomon Sugi, which is reported to be several thousand years old.
2024--Las Laguna Gallery, Laguna Beach, Online juried exhibition, Showing of the painting "There's a Light at the End of It."
2020—City of Indio, Public Art Works Project, Use of the painting "From Dawn to Dusk."
2014—Field Projects Gallery, New York City, Publication of animated film "The Holy Longing" on gallery's website.
2013—City Hearts, Fresh Focus Invitational from actor Max Adler, Auction of prints of Dave Karofsky Portraits.
2012—Riverside Press Enterprise, "Artist Goes Around The World To Find Home."
2012—Aroma Café, Idyllwild CA USA, solo show.
2010—Tikkun Magazine, "The Transformative Promise of Queer Politics."
2009—Cape Gallery, Cape Town SA, group show.
2006—South African Society of Artists, Cape Town SA, Kirstenbosch Gardens, group show; Award for outstanding artwork: "Pacific Crest Trail" reverse glass painting.
2006—French Consulate, Cape Town, South Africa—Picasso in Africa Exhibition, "Woman in Green."