Matthew Whitney (he/his/him) is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and pedestrian. He works between drawing, painting, photography, collage, video, performance, and group facilitation, with a focus on the metaphorical and spiritual power generated through the everyday rhythms of walking, making things, and stillness. He has a BA in Art from Whitworth University and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Arts. He currently serves as Creative Director at Spiritual Directors International.
Artist Statement
My work as an artist is an ongoing exploration into the connections between people, places, and the everyday, manifesting as processes of walking, mapping, and mark-making. Rather than over-program an artwork, I often allow and introduce flawed conditions in which a new path can emerge, a mistake can surprise, or a failure offers discovery. It’s the freedom that comes with wandering a city street grid, though paradoxically that grid determines our paths. It’s choosing an open field over pre-determined trails. Within the intersections of the lines, be they steps or marks, new possibilities continue to reveal themselves.
My work arises from a lifelong pursuit of experience rather than representation. Influenced by Czesław Miłosz’s reflection on William Blake—an ever-seeking chase after self-renewing meaning—I understand myself as an “ever-seeker,” attentive to this one life as it unfolds through the body, the senses, and lived encounter.
I distinguish experience from thought. Thought organizes, categorizes, narrates; experience disrupts. It is felt before it is understood. Art, for me, is not primarily an object or a story, but a site where experience can re-emerge—through touch, intuition, material resistance, and play. In moments when thinking recedes, making becomes sensory and immediate, and occasionally something ineffable appears—beauty, sublimity, or what one might call the sacred.
My earlier work centered on walking as a practice of attention: personal cartographies that traced the relationship between body and ground, often within the urban grid of Seattle. While these works moved closer to lived experience, their reliance on reference—mapping, depiction, documentation—eventually felt insufficient. I seek to narrow the gap between referent and experience, allowing the work to function less as record and more as invitation.
The current body of work begins with crumpled paper. Rather than treating creases, tears, and folds as flaws to be avoided, I accept them as the starting condition—mirroring how we inhabit our bodies, histories, and cultures. Through acts of manipulation, marking, and “deskilling,” the chaotic structure of the paper determines the composition. Order emerges from unpredictability.
These works function as trailheads rather than destinations. They invite viewers into an encounter—tactile, open-ended, and participatory—offering not a singular meaning, but spaciousness for many. In a world shaped by disorder and collective pain, I approach chaos not as failure, but as a logic we may learn to meet with curiosity, trust, and care.
Land Acknowledgment
My walking practice, my studio practice, and my home all benefit from the land on which I live and work. I acknowledge this land as stewarded and blessed by the first people of Seattle, the Duwamish People. I offer gratitude to the land itself and the Duwamish Tribe, and I support their fight for federal recognition and reparations through the Real Rent Duwamish movement.
For inquiries please e-mail me at matt at matthewwhitney dot com. Or you can use the form to contact me below.