Christopher Mathie

Christopher Mathie is a vibrant regional painter well known for his dynamic abstractions that reference coastal landscapes. His warm style is a result of trusting personal artistic mark making, allowing pure color, texture, line and form to be distilled into essential elements. Mathie creates many large canvases of coastal-inspired renderings, as well as thoughtful smaller works that reference local subjects like the interplay of water and rocks or a crab on the cusp of sand and sea. In his spirited abstractions, Mathie conveys a realm that exists somewhere between reality and imagination.

Mathie's mixed media paintings are filled with energetic movement, fluid emotion, and bold confident brushwork, as the artist builds up layer after layer of textural paint to achieve complicated coloration and highly activated tactile surfaces. Deconstructing his subjects to their most important lines and organic forms, Mathie's intriguing canvases invite viewers to engage very personally with his painterly attributes.  The Washington-state artist is widely recognized in the Pacific Northwest with over three-decades of exhibition history. His paintings have been exhibited nationally and are included in private and corporate collections nationally and internationally.

In 2022 Christopher Mathie marked his 30th year working as a full-time professional artist. His first exhibition was in a small Gig Harbor, WA gallery in 1992. He couldn’t have known at the time it would be the beginning of a long, successful career as a studio artist.  Today he works with six art galleries and the Museum of Northwest Art store. Over the years he's worked with more than eighty galleries and with many interior designers. Custom work has been a significant part of his career, but his most immense joy comes from going into the art studio with a cup of coffee and letting loose on a large-scale painting with no idea what's about to come out. He loves to explore right on the canvas making energetic marks and bold profound shapes...and then just seeing where they take him!

Mathie earned his art degree from the University of Puget Sound in 1994. His paintings are included in private and corporate collections nationally and internationally. He was nominated for the 2016 James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award, given by Frye Art Museum / Artist Trust Consortium.

He states:  I am beyond grateful to have found my true passion and career in the same line of work. Thank you to so many art collectors, galleries, family and friends who have helped me along the way.      — Christopher Mathie