Matt Leines was over my house the other day (we’re friends from college) so I could help him with some computer stuff and I quickly borrowed one of his sketchbooks he had on him to photograph for the blog. I also thought it would compliment yesterday’s post about Laylah Ali’s new drawings because their sensibilities to pattern and myth-folk-like subject matter seem similar. Matt is preparing for a big solo show in Feb. at Clementine Gallery which I am so excited to see. His work is always so engaging- telling some kind of interesting story with a cast of reoccuring characters- all different bearded men, sometimes masked or cloaked and always tigers. I love his more recent paintings where he plays with faces- the moustache of one man face could be the hair of another’s like in this one or a pattern of diamonds could divide a face like a mask giving us a weird play on dimension like this one. It’s really nice to see his looser sketchbook drawings and see how he works out ideas and prepares compositions before those final perfect pieces. He’s also come up with an interesting pattern of symbols that looks like some sort of old scripture which is turning up in some of his recent work (see below). But what does it say? I just got a shrug of the shoulders and a little laugh. You can see more of Matt’s finished work here or here or here. I’ll keep you updated about his coming show. And you can read a great article about him here. (And don’t forget- Matt was one of our first guest bloggers- if you missed his posts you can see them starting here.)

© Julia Rothman 2007