Spray Paint, French Fries, and Bloody Elbows
An Interview with Artist Matt Cremeans
“CaLiGuLa” 48x60 mixed media, SOLD
By Victoria Koelkebeck
You probably haven’t heard of Matt Cremeans or his art since he doesn’t market his work — or have a website — but you likely should.
To give you an idea of who Matt is, when he called me before our interview, he said that he’d been in a mountain biking accident. I asked him if he wanted to reschedule, but he replied that he knew the date and who the president was — so he likely didn’t have a concussion and could still meet me later.
Matt dusted himself off, went home to take a shower then met me at a Shake Shack in Henderson. He grabbed some French fries, and we sat down in a quieter corner of the restaurant. Matt put his elbows on the table, not realizing they were still bleeding from the wipeout on his bike.
“Lemme go get you some napkins for that,” I said, standing up to grab a wad of napkins from the self-serve station. He dabbed the blood from his elbows, and with that, we went on with the interview.
Matt has been making art since he was young. It all started with his mom gifting him canvases, and he kept going from there. Over the years, his work has been heavily influenced by artists like Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Ralph Steadman, and Roy Lichtenstein, all meshed with street and fine art elements.
Matt’s favorite medium is spray paint, but he works with all kinds of mediums: paint markers, acrylic paint, watercolors, clear mediums for adhering images to canvas, and basically anything he can get his hands on and incorporate into his art. Since he is a welder by day, he feels the evolution of his work will be creating sculptures out of metal materials.
To him, street art is an equalizer. Its place is delicately balanced between vandalism and art. Depending on where it is, it can reach all sorts of people whether they’re making their daily commute or simply catching a glimpse of a passing train at some remote railroad crossing.
Matt’s had a difficult journey in his early life. He’s been sober now for six years but struggled with drug abuse earlier in his life. He feels that out of the darkness, a lot of beauty has still surfaced.
“The best paintings I make are when I’m the saddest — when I’m going through the most,” he explains. “I’m a huge advocate for mental health and some people that are clients of mine, they struggle with mental health, and it just resonates with them — they can see it in the painting. And those are my best pieces.”
One of his favorite pieces, “CaLiGuLA,” is pictured above. He ended up selling the piece to a close friend who identified with it. Tragically, about a month after his friend purchased the painting, he passed away from a drug overdose.
“That painting now has a story that nobody will know, and where is it? I don’t know?” He asks. “It may be sitting in storage somewhere and someone is going to clean that out and where do these paintings go?”
Another dark painting that Matt recalls is his piece “MuRdeR mY MinD” inspired by his own struggles with anxiety. He sold this painting to a friend, and that friend ended up passing away from a stroke.
“MuRdEr mY MinD” 48x60 mixed media, SOLD
“So now I think to myself, what’s happened to this painting? What’s going on with this story? Where is it? And that’s the cool thing about art. It’s going to sound fucked up, but if things were to get so dark that I take my own life, I could leave these behind,” he explains. “They’re not going to last forever, but they will outlive me, and I’ve always had that in the back of my head.”
In any of Matt’s work, he leaves behind a million easter eggs to find — little pictures of old movies, images of children at war, renaissance-style bat skeletons, the Pope in a living room engulfed in flames. You could probably stare at one painting for hours and walk away with more questions than you started with.
Although Matt feels that the art community in Las Vegas is still in its infancy, we look forward to seeing what will come to fruition.
To see all of Matt Cremean’s art, you can follow him on Instagram @mattycremeans_art. Tell em’ V sent you. And to purchase any of Matt’s art merch, go to: https://mattycremeans-art-3.creator-spring.com/?
