Matthew Allton

Vendor Biography

I am a largely self taught artist based in Coventry. I began my artistic career as a teenager, when I mainly concentrated on producing small watercolour landscape paintings, and sold these at local art shops and craft fairs. Since those early days I have always felt compelled to create, but like many, an ever busier day job career meant that I had less and less time to concentrate on art.

In June 2023 I decided that it really was time to refocus on my artistic self. I had set up a Facebook page for my art at the beginning of 2023 and in June I set up a Youtube channel to help share my creative journey and hopefully my growing confidence over time as I returned to art more regularly. Next came the launch of my Patreon at the beginning of 2024, which has become a wonderful small and supportive community of artists wanting to improve and learn from each other. All of these online enterprises have helped to encourage me and I am now back to producing work much more prolifically. I have been exhibiting my work at group exhibitions throughout 2024, and its great to meet people at these exhibitions to get feedback and to talk about my work with the general public.

Although I have been painting and drawing for years, I very much class myself as being at the beginning of a new chapter of my artistic journey, and since refocussing in June 2023, my work has been about exploring or revisiting a wide variety of media and subjects. My recent work has been mainly created using pencil, charcoal, pastels, gouache and oil paints and the main themes have been landscape, sill life and figurative work. Its currently a very eclectic mix! Maybe it will remain like this for a while, or maybe I will begin to focus down on particular media or themes? In the meantime I am very much enjoying immersing myself back into art, and although I am still working around a full time day job, I’m hoping that over time I can rebalance these two parts of my life more equally!

I am a member of The Coventry and Warwickshire Society of Artists (CWSA) and the Leamington Studio Artists (LSA).