Shadow Work: Matt Coyle

During the Renaissance, the creation of illusory space became the foundation of the Western art canon. In the hands of the artist, the intangible became visible, and three-dimensional form was made real upon a two-dimensional surface. The human eye’s experience of the real world could now be replicated in paint. It changed everything. Imagination, indoctrination, and replication became de rigueur. The power to create other worlds through illusion made the artist an alchemist of the mind. Yet the advent of photography—and the subsequent debate around the role of painting in a world drowning in digital imagery—challenged the medium to maintain its relevance.

For an artist to be truly original, finding a way for painting to challenge an audience while still adhering to the complexities of illusionistic image-making is the task. Matt Coyle’s creation of complex, broodingly beautiful imagery opens pictorial spaces that form a labyrinth into the subconscious. They are deeply moving, strange, and evocative. To label them as surrealist, noir-esque, or trompe-l’œil speaks more to our obsession with categorising that which we struggle to understand. The greatness of this artist lies in his ability to take us to places without providing the road map to find our way back.