Serious Thrill Issues, Dude 14X14

Tom Matousek is a San Francisco based, award winning artist, who began his artistic journey by studying cartoons as a child and in a short time, could draw almost anything from memory. “I have lots of memories of staying up late with my brother and friends, watching Creature Features and drawing anything we could get our hands on—the sports page, baseball and football cards, beverage cans and cartoon characters. I would stay in my room for hours creating my own cartoons. From the time I was a kid it was my dream to be a Disney artist.”

His meteoric rise as a prominent mural painter soon landed his artwork in the homes of professional athletes, high-end restaurants, and at AT&T Park, home of three time World Series Champions, the San Francisco Giants.  These commissions soon drew the eye of San Francisco’s world renowned theater district, where Tom began a career in Set Design that ultimately led him, in 2010, to win a Shellie Award, the East Bay’s version of the Tony’s.

All the while, Tom Matousek continued to experiment with portraits on canvas, using abstract shapes in order to define his artistic voice even further. It was during this explorative period that Tom began to compose faces using sharp, geometric forms. Although this style, at first glance, appears to be about the individual shapes and colors, it is more about light value, and how that causes the human eye to manipulate the shapes and colors involuntarily in order to find a cohesive form.

This breakthrough in form and style led Tom to be named the artist in residence for the DDR Corporation, which sent him to a various cities around the country to create community art projects based on his unique style. In 2013 and 2014, he was the featured artist at the world’s largest chalk festival in Pasadena, CA. And shortly after that, At Art Basel in Miami Beach, FL, BMW unveiled their i8 concept car at Tom’s show, and he had the opportunity to present the highly esteemed artist, Romero Britto, with a portrait. Upon seeing Tom’s work, Britto, who is no stranger to people painting his image, remarked, “At least 500 people have painted my portrait. Yours is the most spectacular!”