MATTHEW PAWLOWSKI received his M.F.A in 1994 from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Macalester College, St. Paul, in 1988, receiving the Distinguished Merit Award for Art. Among numerous honors and awards, PAWLOWSKI has been a finalist for the prestigious Bush Foundation Fellowship. Also a curator, he served in that capacity for ESP Gallery in San Francisco from 1997-2000.

Portraiture has always played an important role in MATTHEW PAWLOWSKI’S work. He began his undergraduate studies painting friends and fellow students. Because the human form has always been of interest as a subject matter, PAWLOWSKI has spent much time researching how portraits and their cultural meanings change over time. His goal is to retrieve these cultural images and provide a contemporary context in which to view them.

PAWLOWSKI’S current research has lead him to the Victorian era. Between 1837 and 1901, the world began a swift transition from agrarian-centered society to urban and industrial dominance. Through the Civil War in America and on to the First World War, the way we viewed ourselves was inextricably changed. Photography was invented, and came to pictorially dominate our culture during the Victorian Era. PAWLOWSKI found this most interestingly illustrated in mourning portraiture. One hundred and seventy years ago the average life span was 45 years for the upper class, and under 30 years for laborers. Disease and epidemics were rampant, as wars decimated populations. Dying was part of daily life, simple and commonplace. Loved ones were remembered and honored after death through painted portraits. Jeweled brooches were painted with miniature likenesses of those lost. Painstakingly intricate embroideries were sewn to honor the dead, and for the first time, photos of deceased family members, even children, posed as though barely asleep, were taken, developed, printed and saved as keepsakes.

This research is the beginning point of PAWLOWSKI’S new body of work. PAWLOWSKI is exploring the contrast in the way we honored lives less than two hundred years ago, to the way we represent loved ones today. In 2008, we hide caskets returning from Iraq, and death seems private, almost shameful. New plagues ravage and isolate us from one another. In Victorian times, portraiture commemorated our loved ones only after death. Symbolism played an important didactic role in expressing the Victorian culture's belief system. The Weeping Willow and the Everlasting Oak were visual codes of natures enduring cycle of death and rebirth. Decorative patterns from the era were labyrinthine stories unto themselves. By re-visiting portraits again, by comparing and exploring symbols and patterns, PAWLOWSKI hopes to honor people he loves while they are still here to bear witness. He states, “I seek to recognize myself in each new face I paint. I am delving into this imagery to reconcile my own unanswered questions about mortality and to think in terms of the personal and the monumental.”