Matt Crookshank

> Matt Crookshank Interview on Artsync

Now Magazine Review by David Jager, November 29, 2012

Akimbo Review by Terence Dick, November 27, 2012

Review: www.torontoisawesome.com/heart-to-column/heart-to-the-unlikely-event-matt-crookshank-solo-show-at-general-hardware-contemporary/

CV and additional images are available upon request.

Matt Crookshank is a Canadian painter. He dares to paint fearlessly and without restraint. From mystical storytelling to alchemical investigations, Crookshank is constantly playing with psychic powers in an intuitive approach to painting.

“Utterly gonzo, paint on paint on paint abstracts, works that revel in the accidental and the alchemical” R.M. Vaughan, The Globe and Mail June 23, 2012

Crookshank holds a BFA from Queen’s University and has exhibited his paintings in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, London, Basel, Mexico City, and Toronto over the past 10 years. Crookshank’s work has been written about in the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Toronto Star, and Canadian Art Magazine and was included in Carte Blanche Painting 2, a publication of works selected by the jury of the Magenta Foundation. In 2012 Crookshank’s paintings were featured in the main space at the Canadian painting survey show ‘60P’ in Toronto.

“… I started to crawl into my own drawings, and I noticed there were all these conflicting tendencies – harsh lines and marks mixed with more fluid, organic shapes. It looked like a war to me. So I put my conflicting impulses on the canvas to see if they could come to some sort of agreement.”
-Matt Crookshank

“I’m a little bit obsessed with the idea of toxic spills and toxic waste, because I feel we really live in a toxic world and we are seduced by our own toxicity. We all live in a world where we do things everyday that are bad for us – bad for everyone – and everyone does it and we can’t stop doing it.”
-Matt Crookshank

Acclaim for Matt Crookshank

“Matt Crookshank is one of the most important painters in contemporary Canadian art, he delves into paint fearlessly, paints with remarkable gusto and leaves the viewer thirsty for more.”
-Nadja Sayej, host, ArtStars*

“Matt Crookshank’s work… appears to have been painted on a dare. Forget all the rules about harmonious use of colour or balanced composition, these paintings look like birthday cakes attacked by jack hammers.”
-NOW magazine

“The works of Matt Crookshank are not simply pretty pictures but rather a visual expunging of the manifold ideas that rattle around the artist’s skull.”
-Travis Reynolds, art critic, Swerve Magazine

“Matt Crookshank maps out a kaleidoscopic, jewel-toned virtual universe in his digital paintings.”
-Bryne McLaughlin, Canadian Art magazine

“His flamboyant, happy disasters demonstrate by contrast how bland and predictable most contemporary abstraction has become.”
-RM Vaughan, Toronto art critic, The Globe and Mail