Stories Behind The Art – Matthew Wood

Whether an overlooked corridor or hidden valley, Wales-based painter Matthew Wood seeks to document the dramatic interplay between light and shadow in scenes which emotionally resonate with him. His method is both direct and expressive, bringing his compositions alive through his masterful command of perspective and depth. “I work with historic buildings mainly and Welsh landscape.” he says, “but interiors are kind of my thing. It’s all about the atmosphere of the place.” Here, he chooses three paintings from his latest collection of historic interiors and shares their stories.

“This is a painting of a place called the Judge’s Lodging in Presteigne in mid-Wales. It’s kind of like a living history museum so there’s lots going on, oil lamps and gas lights, and this area is still used to monitor and maintain the lamps. It’s a bloke called Dave that does all this. So they call it Dave’s Cave. 

I’m always drawn to the light in compositions. There’s a strong light coming through the window, reflecting and casting shadows. I do like a challenge and playing around with the secondary light source of the oil lamp and how that influenced the composition was certainly something different. I love returning to this scene particularly because it always changes. Whenever I visit, it’s different. I used to work on location a lot pre-COVID. And then Covid happened and I started to, reluctantly to begin with, use photographs. I quickly discovered that using photographs enables me to play around with scale and what I paint and when I paint, so it’s grown on me now. I do still occasionally paint from life, but it’s nice to be in the studio working on multiple pieces at once. 

There’s a lot of atmosphere in some of these properties and there’s always the excitement of discovering something as well. My first foray into historic interiors was Powis Castle, in mid-Wales, and I was hooked. It was great because I just had the opportunity to wander around. It was at the point with the National Trust where they actually shut things down over the winter. So there were literally just two members of staff there and myself just going around and painting haunted rooms (I didn’t see anything though!)”

“This is the laundry room in Erddig Hall, which is in Wrexham. I was an artist in residence there about 7 or 8 years ago. I’ve always gone back to revisit it. What draws me to this view is the glossy floor and the light through the window. I get drawn to the relationship between dark and light within interiors. You have a sort of absence of presence, you know, obviously there’s no figures in this, but for me, it’s always about the distance and the way that the painting can guide you towards something beyond the window. Almost like a waking dream where it’s familiar but not familiar. It’s not something consciously that I do, but I’m aware afterwards, almost like I’m encouraging the viewer to make their own mind up or form a connection with what’s going on there. It’s not too descriptive. It’s not giving too much away. It’s all about light and it’s about perspective and it’s about depth in the compositions really. But yeah, I really enjoyed this painting, it’s a nice place.”

“This is Plas Brondanw, the home of Clough Williams-Ellis, who’s famous for designing Portmeirion Village. I was invited to do a small exhibition there, so I went round the house and got a feel for the place beforehand. If you know Portmeirion, you might remember ‘The Prisoner’, a tv show from the 60s. It was filmed there and it’s got a very distinctive architectural style and many of those interesting architectural features appear in both places, like the archway in this painting. But what really drew me to this scene was the relationship between the different surfaces and textures going up towards the window – slate, granite, wooden floors and how they reflect or absorb the light. There’s just a classic thing here that appeals to me, that just caught my eye, and I was just compelled to paint.”

Click here to see the full collection.