Matthew Bennett is a digital landscape artist inspired by a love of landscape, geology, geography, and mountains. The pieces are ‘painted’ from a blank screen using the painting freeware Krita. It is designed for artists and is much more intuitive to paint with than something like Photoshop.
Matthew is self-taught, taking up painting about ten years ago as an antidote to the stresses of life, first in acrylics and then in water colours of mountains and arctic scenes. He still prefers real paint, but digital painting allows him to get a few minutes here and there without the bother of having to clean up every time. So much easier with children in the house!
The pictures in this exhibition are all inspired by Snowdonia and its mountains. There are a few Artic scenes to give a taste of other work done by the artist.
Matthew is a geologist by profession who was brought up near Betws-y-Coed and in Oldham. He is currently exiled on the UK’s south coast but spends every moment he can in Snowdonia where his parents keep a home, and he plans to retire to the vicinity of Betws-y-Coed as soon as he is able. As an academic geologist he has written hundreds of scientific papers and textbooks including a popular account of the Geology of Snowdonia. He has travelled and worked throughout the world but always return to his first love, the mountains of Wales. In the words of Hywel Ab Owain, Prince of Gwynedd,
Snowdonia
I love its sea-marsh and mountains,
And its fortress by its forest and its bright territories,
And its meadows and its water and its valleys,
And its white seagulls and its lovely women.