Matt Overend (American, b. 1950), Black Barn No. 1

oil on canvas, signed and dated 2006, inscribed to verso, framed.
Frame dimensions 21 1/2 x 28 1/2 in.
Born in Las Vegas, Matt Overend grew up in Atlanta and studied aerospace engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. In 1973, he moved to California and studied art at Santa Barbara City College and then at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1978 he was accepted to the College of Creative Studies, UCSB, and after two years recieved the Ellen Batell-Stoeckel Fellowship to Yale University. He has lived in Smoaks, South Carolina since 1981.

Artist's Statement:
"My work is best described as originating in solitude. Essentially, the subject of the painting, whether still-life, landscape, or the architectural studies, is personal isolation – a sense of quiet solitude. As what an artist paints becomes what he sees, and what he sees eventually becomes what he feels, the paintings are influenced by living here in South Carolina. In particular, the landscapes, the road and field studies, the pine trees, are of course determined in every actual sense by the air, the light, and above all the horizon – how land meets sky. The flat, straight-arrow edge of earth and sky, when placed in relation to the vertical and horizontal edge of the canvas, creates an immediate design – an architecture, an opportunity for variation, and a motivation to search for an asymmetrical balance, an arrangement around the center of the canvas, the zero point about which that balance can be built."

Additional high-resolution photos are available at www.lelandlittle.com

Small paint flake to center of shadow below barn.