Inside the Studio

Peter Mátyási

Favorite material to work with?
It depends on the conception, but mostly canvas! Sometimes paper or board…

What is your medium?
I use acrylic or emulsion paint nowadays because I need the material to dry fast, so these are my favourites now. But I like working with watercolour, and mixing different materials as well.

What themes do you pursue?
I’ve been traveling in the city  by bike for 3 years, and a different view of the city has formed in my head. I paint the structures of the city, the patterns, facades, different geometric forms of buildings, spaces. A little bit surrealistic city with the mixture of strong gestures and precise forms.

How many years as an artist?
I graduated in 2009, so officially for 3 years.

Most important tool you use?
Masking tape.

Favorite font?
Angol font 🙂
(In Hungarian ’font’ means pound. English Pound is Angol font, so it’s a joke).

Where is your studio?
In Lágymányosi utca 6., in the XI. district of Budapest.

Favorite eats?
I can’t choose…It depends on my mood, but one of my favourites is a Hungarian meal, called ’krumplikása’.

Tattoos?
No.

What was the best advice given to you as an artist?
“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live. Be a man before being an artist!” – Auguste Rodin.

What’s around the corner from your place?
An ice-bar,  a furniture store, a coffee bar, a second-hand bookshop, and a bank.

A piece of art you love?
“Princesse de Broglie” by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

Prefer to work with music or in silence?
It doesn’t matter for me if there is a background music when I am working, but I don’t like if music keeps me busy and I can’t concentrate on painting.

Where can we find you outside the studio?
I’m usually somewhere near the studio, because everything can be found here: a market, cook-shops, the school where I teach, several pubs, and the bank of the Danube where I often go fishing.

Psychedelics?
I don’t need any.

Day job?
Drawing teacher,  wall-decorator, cultural program organizer.

Process> Concept or Process<Concept?
The process can’t overwrite the main concept, but it can modify, so Process >=< Concept

If you couldn’t be an artist, what would you do?
I would be an ornithologist.

Favorite sound?
Sough.

What do you collect?
I used to collect stamps and minerals. I collect experiences now.

Food or Sleep?
Both.

How cleanly do you work?
I try to keep my studio as clean as possible. Sometimes it’s impossible.

Do you have any trinkets or photos of friends in your studio?
Small objects, or drawings, or messages, paintings…

Traditional or Conceptual?
The medium I work in is traditional,  the ’”themes” as well, but there is a conceptual side of my works.