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Matthew is the owner of Substance, a Chicago branding agency. Rescue certified scuba diver, visual artist, and meditation practitioner.

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Halloween traces its roots back to Samhain (“sow-in”), the Gaelic festival marked across Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. The name means “summer’s end.” Beginning at sunset on October 31, it marked the close of the harvest and the turn into the darker half of the year. The crops were finished, the livestock readied for winter, the fields left bare.

It was also a liminal time. The boundary between this world and the Otherworld was believed to grow thinner, so spirits, fairies and the dead could move closer to the living. People lit bonfires and wore disguises to ward off the spirits and protect themselves.

I didn’t set out to illustrate that in this piece but it certainly ended up that way in spirit.

Late Harvest
24” x 18”
Watercolor and ink on paper by @matthewbrett.art

When I was in 4th grade at Immaculate Conception, Mrs. Busher (one of the few decent teachers, and incidentally, one of the few who wasn’t a nun) gave me a book of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories and poems. I was into comic books and horror movies, and she thought Poe might elevate my culture and my reading game. (I was an odd kid. Still am.)

I loved it. I still love comics, and horror movies but Poe was the first serious writer I took to, which led to everything that followed.

Years later, my sister Regina took me to see Vincent Price speak at Kent State, which would later become my alma mater. He was absolutely brilliant; witty, and utterly captivating. He lectured for two hours on the role of the villain in theater and film through an Aristotelian lens. His thesis was that we always relate to the villain because we are all deeply flawed, and that connects us to them on a fundamental level.

Thank you, Mrs. Busher, Regina, Edgar, and Vincent.

Here are three ravens for a Happy Halloween.

Ink on paper, various sizes.

#inkpainting #ravenart #edgarallanpoe #inktober #halloweenart by @matthewbrett.art

Tara

Tara has been part of Buddhist practice for over a thousand years. In Tibet she’s called Jetsün Dölma, the Mother of Liberation, and in the Vajrayana tradition she’s a fully enlightened Buddha. She is the mother of all the buddhas of past, present, and future.

Her origin story starts with grief. Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, wept over the suffering of the world. His tears formed a lake, a lotus grew from it, and Tara appeared when it opened. She’s the one who hears people cry out, and she responds.

The figure in my painting sits in lotus posture, hands in her lap, draped in a veil that could belong to a Madonna or to Christ. I’m happy to leave that open. She has no face, so she could be anyone.

Perhaps that’s the point of the bodhisattva. Any of us could be the one who hears and responds.

Tara
Watercolor and charcoal on paper
18” x 12”

#Tara #GreenTara #DivineFeminine #BuddhistArt #contemplativeart by @matthewbrett.art

The Fall biblically refers to the casting out from Eden, condemning Adam and Eve to the materiality of Earth. That myth feels timely to me, a metaphor for our continued lack of stewardship and regard for natural resources. What happens in the absence of water cascading down a rocky crevasse?

The fall. Nothing more.

The Fall
12” x 9”
Watercolor and ink on paper

#TheFall #ActsOfNature #inkandwatercolor #watercolorpainting #contemporarywatercolor #abstractlandscape #inkwash #paperandwater by @matthewbrett.art

The more time I spend with nature, the greater my reverence and humility towards it.

The phrase “power and the glory” comes from the Lord’s Prayer and is typically an expression of acknowledgement of supreme power and authority, and radiance or honor. I’m the least religious person you’ll ever meet but that sums up my feeling of being in the presence of nature in all its splendor, be it a whale shark, a rainstorm, or a rockfall.

Power and Glory
12” x 9”
Watercolor and charcoal on paper

#contemporarywatercolor #workonpaper #abstractlandscape #paintingnature #charcoalandwatercolor #artistsoninstagram #watercolorpainting #rockformation by @matthewbrett.art

Excited to see these pieces hung at @box.factory.arts in St. Joseph, Michigan! It's such a cool space, and the folks who helped with the install couldn't have been nicer.

These two pieces, Roshi and Metta, are the last and largest of the 40 Buddhas series. I'm happy other people will get to see and experience these, and that they get to live somewhere beyond my flat file.

Also, I have no idea why I look so pissed off in this photo, I was actually in a great mood. Resting grump face.

#40Buddhas #contemplativeart #buddhaart #stjosephmichigan #michiganartist #galleryinstall #artistsoninstagram #meditativeart #inkandwatercolor #chicagoartist #boxfactoryarts #buddhistart #newshow #artopening #originalart by @matthewbrett.art

Madonna in Mourning
The pose is one of the oldest in Western art: a hooded female figure curved down and inward, a smaller form gathered at the center. But this isn't a Madonna and child. It's a Madonna carrying a burden, holding a vigil rather than a child.

This is a mother after the fact. She still holds the shape of what she carried. The arms still curve the way they would around a body that isn't there anymore. The child is gone. The love stays, wrapped now in grief instead of arms.

Madonna in Mourning
12” x 9”
ink on paper

#MadonnaInMourning #GriefArt #InkAndWatercolor #SumiInk #AbstractFigurativeArt #MotherAndChild #ContemporaryInkArt #FineArtPainting #BlackAndWhiteArt #NegativeSpaceArt #ArtistOnInstagram #WatercolorAndInk #EmotiveArt #ArtCollector #ContemporaryPainting by @matthewbrett.art

In the oldest star charts, Lupus doesn't stand alone. It lies pinned beneath Centaurus, who holds it toward Ara, the altar, close enough that early astronomers read the pairing as a sacrifice: a beast carried to slaughter. Some Greek sources didn't even name it a wolf. They called it Therion, simply "the beast," nameless because its only role was to be offered.

My focus was the wolf, not the stars, but the ink had other ideas. The Milky Way kept finding its way into the body rather than staying behind it. Wolves fascinate me, and apparently they fascinated the ancient Greeks too, enough to pin one to the sky and still not settle on its name.

Lupus, Two Editions
12” x 9”
ink on paper
#Lupus #WolfArt #ConstellationArt #InkAndWatercolor #SumiInk #AnimalSacrifice #GreekMythology #NightSky #MilkyWay #WolfPainting #ContemporaryInkArt #MythologyArt #FineArtPainting #ArtistOnInstagram #WatercolorAndInk #WildlifeArt #StarLore #AncientGreekMyth #BlackAndWhiteArt #ArtCollector by @matthewbrett.art

$A fault line is a fracture or break in the Earth’s crust where blocks of rock have shifted past one another. These cracks form where tectonic plates meet. As stress builds and releases along these lines, it causes earthquakes. Although they seemingly come from nowhere, they more often have been developing over thousands of years. That underlying tension and release is what I tried to capture here. The other works in this series trace what erosion or weather carve from the outside. This piece looks inward, at collapse as a structural event, a system folding inward. Implosion Watercolor and charcoal on paper 12” x 9” #ActsOfNature #WatercolorArt #InkAndWatercolor #ContemporaryWatercolor #WorksOnPaper #AbstractLandscape #FaultLine #GeologicalArt #ChicagoArtist #ChicagoArt #ContemporaryArtist #InkWash #CharcoalAndInk #NatureInspiredArt #AbstractArt #ArtOnPaper #PaperArt #FineArtPainting #EarthTones by @matthewbrett.art$

Cygnus is the brightest star constellation in the northern sky, and holds the first black hole ever discovered as well. Cygnus (swan in Latin) also contains the Northern Cross, one of the easiest ways to find it in the night sky. That’s a lot going on in one star pattern.

I’ve always been intrigued by the stars and the nights sky, probably the first meditative experience I ever had though I would have never used that term to describe it. It’s reassuring to me that the same quality I feel from looking at the night sky is akin to how I feel when deep in the flow of painting, so this seems a natural subject. More constellations to come.

Two sizes, 12” x 9” and 24” x 18"

#inkwash #inkpainting #inkonpaper #contemporaryink #watercolorpainting #birdart #swanart #minimalistart #blackandwhiteart #fineartdrawing by @matthewbrett.art

Indigenous
Watercolor and charcoal on paper, 36" x 27", 2026

This piece is an homage to native sacred lands, a concept the modern world seems to have less and less use for. The idea that a particular piece of ground could be sacred sounds almost antiquated now.

I think it may be one of the few beliefs that should still govern how carefully we treat the earth. Climate shifts, data centers, and a general drift away from any real connection to a sense of place put pressure on the ground beneath us, and it responds in kind.

Nature keeps moving and shifting, whether we notice or not.

#actsofnature #watercolor #worksonpaper #inkandwatercolor #charcoaldrawing #landscapepainting #contemporaryart #chicagoartist #artistsoninstagram by @matthewbrett.art

Fissure
Watercolor and charcoal on paper, 24” x 18”, 2025

This piece holds a single fissure, two bands of earth pulled apart, a channel of cracked ground running between them. In a literal sense this is meant to depict a cutaway view of the earth where this chasm occurs. More importantly and evocatively this is meant to show the changing, often violent nature of tectonic change that takes place without our knowledge.
Nature is always moving, shifting, literally the ground beneath our feet.

#actsofnature #watercolor #worksonpaper#inkandwatercolor #charcoaldrawing#landscapepainting #contemporaryart #chicagoartist#artistsoninstagram by @matthewbrett.art

Matthew Brett

@matthewbrett.art