Meet our RITUAL illustrator: Matt Smithson

Each month, CreativeMornings has a different theme for the talks given at our local chapter events around the world. It is our tradition to work with an artist in our community to create an illustration for each monthly theme.

Our theme for August is RITUAL. It was chosen by our Charlottesville chapter in North Carolina and illustrated by Matt Smithson.

Matt Smithson is a director, animator, and painter. He holds an MFA from Savannah College of Art & Design in Motion Media and a BA from The College Of Charleston where he focused on painting and printmaking. From humorous, craftily cut animations to uplifting stories, Matt directs animated films for clients all over the world, including Young Arts, Patagonia, Lincoln and IBM, and do-gooders such as The Girl Effect, Ford Foundation, and the Parker Foundation. He was recognized with a Young Gun award from the Art Director’s Club, and his work was displayed at the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York as part of the “Why Design Now?” Triennial Exhibition.

From Matt’s Artist Statement

Since I was young, I’ve written down sentences that appear in my head just as my mind is getting quiet and falling asleep. Most of the time they seemed like nonsense, strings of words tied together. They are bizarre and odd and beautiful. I have used these as the starting points to many pieces of work over the past 20+ years, dissecting them, interpreting them in different ways, over and over. Through repetition, I discover meaning in these seemingly random thoughts. Over the past few years, the circumstances of the day-to-day have crept into the sleep. I now merge the two. I use my volumes of sleep sentences and odd narratives as a starting point. And I let life filter in. Now the subjects of my art lie somewhere in between sleep and circumstance.

Listen to how to pronounce Matt’s name.

You can see more of Matt’s work on his site and follow him on Instagram @matt__smithson.

Selected Works