Toronto-based painter Matt Bahen's primary influence is literature. He strives to interpret the power of metaphor and allegory with paint. Bahen listens to audiobooks while working in his studio and is an avid reader of fiction, in particular the writings of Cormac McCarthy, T.S. Eliot and Joseph Conrad. His impastoed surfaces and stark compositions are at once unsettling and highly engaging. Using various motifs including water, fire and animals, Bahen constructs individual narratives that remain in a state of perpetual tension.
Matt Bahen was born in 1979 in Schomberg, Ontario. He received his BFA from the Ontario College of Art in 2002. In 2013, his solo exhibition, Gravity's Faith, was held at the MacLaren Art Centre in Barrie. Bahen is represented in Toronto and New York.