Matthew
da Silva

I came to art following 35 years working in offices, mainly doing editorial work including desktop publishing but also including a stint freelancing as a journalist. I wanted to do art when I was a teenager but had a choice at school between studying French or art because of the timetable. Dad didn’t let me drop French so I went to uni, got a degree, started working, made a family and relocated to Japan for my career.

Once back home I completed a second degree in journalism. In 2022 I started making paramontages and established the Eastern Suburbs Art Group. “Paramontage” is a portmanteau word coined by an old school friend Andrew Adair, a poet. I’m interested in how reality’s constructed through stories under power of commercial prerogatives.

I started making watercolours in November 2022 and my first solo show ‘Media of mass psychology’ featured 13 works. Now that I am doing what I always wanted to do it seems to me that the majority of my life was spent in a kind of prison.