The Mattie King Davis Art Gallery is excited to welcome artist Matt Hirsheimer in February 2023. A free show will be held at the gallery in conjunction with the Valentine Membership Party on Sunday, February 5 from 2 – 4 p.m. Hirsheimer will be the featured artist for the months of February and March.
Hirsheimer’s pieces are primarily acrylics and are vivid, full of life, and happy — much like his great personality! He is from Cary, North Carolina, but many of the pieces you will find capture familiar coastal scenes as he and his wife are frequent visitors to the area.
Before delving fulltime into his art, he worked with Pepsi Beverages Company, where he spent a majority of his professional career as the Head of Safety. However, he still was drawn to painting, and continued to create lively pieces in his free time. It even became tradition that every longtime Pepsi Beverages Company employee that retired was (and still is) gifted a reproduction of one of Matt’s paintings!
For Hirsheimer, he knew he was always destined to create. “I always did some form of doodling, cartooning, and creating growing up,” He said. “It was in the early 90’s that I had an opportunity to study under National Watercolor Society artist, Carol Hubbard. That changed my game as far as my technique. It was like learning a new language!”
“Although watercolor was my style for many years, gravitating to nostalgia and old architecture with a strong attraction to the images Edward Hopper created, my painting moved into a more traditional painting using acrylic as my medium.”
While Hirsheimer has created many wonderful pieces, he says his favorite to date is one that he created for the upcoming show of the Beaufort Watercraft Center. “I am a huge fan of Edward Hopper, as I’ve mentioned. The early morning feels and long shadows is easily reminiscent of some of his pieces. Every now and again, all elements of a painting gel into something quite wonderful.”
Hirsheimer said he is looking forward to his show and has nearly 30 plus paintings on dock to bring that he says “features iconic scenes of this wonderful seaside town” that also capture his range of styles. “Beaufort is quite the quintessential coastal town with beautiful things to paint on every corner!” he said.
“It has been an honor to be a part of several galleries, but in particular being a part of the artist group at Mattie King Davis Art Gallery. These achievements our anchored by the fact that people enjoy my work enough to bring pieces’ home to be a part of their collections. That is the ultimate achievement!”
Come find a special new piece for your home this February and March! For more information about the artist and or the Mattie King Davis Art Gallery, call 252-728-5225, visit beauforthistoricsite.org and Hirsheimer’s website, or stop in at the Safrit Welcome Center at 130 Turner Street.