NEWBERRY — Since his arrival in Newberry two years ago, artist Robert Matheson has made a colorful splash in Newberry County.
Matheson is a painter and visual artist, he said he has been working full time as an artist for about seven years and part time for about 20.
“My original career was as a graphic designer. There is a general push to direct arts into STEM fields, which is what I experienced growing up. You are into art, you like drawing, you like painting, you like that stuff, then you get a general push to do digital art, digital media, video photography — that’s how I got into photography. I worked a lot of internet, websites, graphic design,” he said.
Matheson found himself burned out from that line of work, which he said is a problem with the technical industries.
“There is a lot of demand for that talent, put in a lot of hours over the years,” he said. “I always wanted to be painting with my hands, go back to that, I think that is maybe partially because I grew up when there wasn’t internet.”
Matheson, a Utah native, said his family didn’t get their first computer until he was in middle school, and they didn’t get internet until he was in high school. He said, at that time, the internet was the cool new thing and people were getting directed into that field and away from the more traditional arts.
“But, I always liked the traditional arts, that is what I grew up with as a kid,” he said.
Matheson’s first artistic memory was when he said he drew a bunch of different cartoons on a toy Lego box, he said he called it his “spy box.”
“I remember one year on the Fourth of July, putting firework flowers, smoke bombs and stuff and placing it on the box and then decorating the whole box. That is my earliest memory,” he said.
Matheson’s style of art is impressionist, he said, leaning on a little bit of abstract. While in his studio, he showed off his new painting called “Fragments of Whitmire” — in the painting you can see the clock and that is representational and not realist, he said.
“You get the impression, but then I put a lot of abstract elements in my paintings,” he said.
This particular painting, Matheson said. is leaning more illustrative, but has the abstract elements. He said he always tries and includes something that isn’t something you’d expect.
Discussing his process, Matheson used “Fragments of Whitmire” as an example, he started by stapling it on a panel in his new studio and started making “marks” on it, coloring it.
“Getting what I just call a tone background, something to start from — that is just the act of flowing paint,” he said.
Once the tone background is established, he’ll make “marks” on it, he said these are just free marks.
“That will be what I call the mark making stage, then on top of that, here is what I’m inspired to paint about,” he said.
In this case, Matheson was recently in Whitmire a few times taking pictures with the Newberry Photo Group and he said he was feeling the desire to document some of the elements.
“I wanted to create a painting with that representative imagery,” he said.
Matheson started “Fragments of Whitmire” with a dark colored background, then he made “marks” on it and went back and started to fill it in with fragments with representational imagery. Within this piece, Matheson incorporated the Whitmire street clock, town hall and silhouettes of bottles from the South Carolina Bottle and Whitmire Museum.
“I have this idea of doing a series of work on rural towns in South Carolina and showcasing some of their iconic imagery, stuff people don’t know about,” Matheson said. “Every small town has a lot of beautiful assets that get looked over because of the bigger cities, people focus on Columbia, Greenville, Charleston and are not going out and appreciating the small towns like Newberry and Whitmire.”
Matheson has worked on a number of paintings since his arrival in Newberry, some of which showcase local landmarks — like the Newberry Opera House and Community Hall.
When it comes to his favorite local painting, Matheson said that would be the Newberry Opera House.
“That was a time when I was living in the Old Hotel, just moved to town and that painting came together in a really interesting way. The tone background included fragments of newspapers and maps collected when I was exploring the town, considering moving here. Kind of a culmination of moving here, using that process to create the background for the painting and painting the Opera House on top of it,” he said.
Matheson said that painting ended up getting purchased by donations for the Newberry Opera House and is on display there.
To view some of Matheson’s art, you can visit newberrymade.com and see the walking map, which includes 14 different artist, at this time. You’ll be able to see which venue his art is on display. You can also see his Community Hall painting in the Newberry County Visitor Center (1209 Caldwell Street) and at the Newberry Opera House (201 McKibben Street).