My early work concentrated on representing landscapes, predominantly using watercolours. These paintings were exhibited and sold at craft fairs and art shops throughout the midlands.

More recent work is almost exclusively figurative. This shift in focus was largely as a result of attending evening life drawing classes for several years at FE colleges in Nuneaton and Coventry, where I obtained a City and Guilds in Life Drawing. My figurative fine art works are produced using a variety of media from pencil and charcoal drawings, through to pastel and acrylic paintings.

Always having had a keen interest in taking and developing my own photos from 35mm film, photography of the human form began purely as a means of capturing reference material for paintings, but recent developments in digital photography have enabled this medium to take a more central, and very important role, in my work.

In future, I hope to exhibit both my fine art and photographic work more widely. I would like to deepen my exploration of the themes and media that have concerned me to date, but also experiment with using technology to create more complex digital artworks.

Matthew's work can be viewed at
Birmingham Rep Theatre
from the 8th May - 4th June, daily

see more of his work here
www.matthewallton.co.uk