In and Through at Wellington Arch Museum London 2023
Matthew Burrows is a British artist whose painting and drawing practice explores the relationship between movement, stillness, and the sacred. Working with layered pigment, washes, stains, and collage, his works emerge through an intuitive, physical process that treats painting as a form of contemplation and embodied attention.
Rooted in an ecological and apophatic sensibility, Burrows’ paintings inhabit thresholds between presence and absence, surface and depth, shadow and light. Horizons, seams, traces, and fields of colour become spaces of reflection rather than representation, inviting viewers into quieter modes of perception.
Multifarious and richly referential in their various skeins, whorls, layers, and patterings these subtle beguiling paintings are built up in layers and conjure up physical contours of landscape as well as ritual mappings, markings and moving through terrain physical and imaginary … themes of interconnectedness chime with the amazing achievement of the circular economy for artists.
Louisa Buck
Alongside his studio practice, Burrows is the founder of Artist Support Pledge, the global artist-led movement launched in 2020 to directly support artists and makers during the pandemic. For this work he was awarded an MBE in The Queen’s Birthday Honours List, received the Prime Minister’s Points of Light Award, was named Apollo Magazine’s Art Personality of the Year, and was included in both the ArtReview Power 100 and Artlyst Alt Power 100.
Burrows is also Lead Mentor for the Turps Off Site mentoring programme Margate, reflecting his ongoing commitment to artistic community, mutual support, and sustainable creative ecologies.
His work has been exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Vigo Gallery, Midlands Arts Centre, and Gloucester Cathedral, as well as group exhibitions at Towner Eastbourne, Walker Art Gallery Liverpool, and Seongnam Arts Centre, Korea. Awards and residencies include the John Moores 24 Painting Prize and an Artist Residency at the National Gallery, London.
Born on the Wirral in 1971, Burrows studied at Birmingham School of Art before completing an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London. He lives and works in East Sussex, UK.
Solo exhibitions include In and Through Welington Arch, London 2023; Beyond the Garden Wall Vigo Gallery, London, 2017; Para-Dice Vigo Gallery, London, 2014; Cultic Twister Alexia Goethe Gallery, London, 2009; Anyone Here? Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham, 2003; A Divine Comedy Gloucester Cathedral, touring to Gloucester City Art Gallery, Huddersfield City Art Gallery, 2000-2001. Group exhibitions include Towards Night Towner Art Gallery Eastbourne 2017; Permeable Edge Otter Gallery Chichester 2016 WET AND DRY painting to the edges Observer Building, Hastings, with Gerard Hemsworth and Rose Wylie, 2015; London Twelve Prague City Museum 2012; Selektionseffekte Blain|Southern, Berlin, with Anton Henning, Rachel Howard, 2011; Foolish Romantics Quay Arts Centre, Isle of Wight, 2010; Layers Seongnam Arts Centre, Korea, 2010; John Moores 24 Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, 2006. Awards and prizes include 20016-19 Artist Fellow University of Chichester, 1999-2000 Artist in Residence, Gloucester Cathedral, 1999-2000; 2006 John Moores 24, Prize Winner, 2006; Artist’s Residency, National Gallery, London, 2000-2001.
Matthew Burrows MBE 