Matt Scott Barnes
Handle With Care
Wheatpaste, Watercolor, Acrylic on panel,
16in x 24in x .75in
Handle With Care is an exploration of the in between spaces that bookend the structured workday: the commute to the office and the transition to the Thursday happy hour. The work functions as a visual diary, capturing the "miscellaneous thoughts" that flicker through the consciousness during these interstitial moments of transition and mental decompression.
The aesthetic structure of the piece mirrors this fragmentation—a collection of disparate observations, anxieties, and fleeting moments of inspiration. The rhythm of the work is dictated not by a steady pulse, but by the jagged, driving beat of Alkaline Trio’s "Armageddon" playing on a car radio, a visceral soundtrack to urban navigation and emotional processing.
The imperative within the piece is clear: to be wild, to embrace spontaneity, and to internalize that rhythm as a personal mandate. This piece honors the necessity of carrying one’s authentic self—the rhythm in one's heart—through the mundane constraints of daily life. Handle With Care ultimately serves as a reminder that the most fragile things we carry with us are our own raw thoughts and emotional energies, which must be protected, celebrated, and handled with a defiant sort of tenderness.
Matt Scott Barnes
Cold Snacks and Lip Packs
Wheatpaste, Watercolor, Acrylic on panel,
11.25in x 14.75in x 1in
Where some narratives celebrate unadulterated exuberance, Cold Snacks and Lip Packs occupies the shadow space, a meditation on memory’s quiet weight. This work is fundamentally an elegy for the immediate past, a visual exploration of mourning the ephemeral moments that slip away, often unnoticed.
The aesthetic framework here is deliberately somber, grounded in the unvarnished realities of the everyday: the quiet melancholy of a fleeting Halloween celebration concluded; the persistent, low-level hum of dealing with prosaic domestic friction, such as routine automotive failures.
The soundscape of this visual narrative is crucial: the slow, deliberate crackle of Lucero’s Attic Tapes on vinyl becomes a character in itself—a raw, analog anchor in an increasingly digitized world. The work captures the act of being lost within one's own head, a condition of being present yet profoundly absent. The juxtaposition of the trivial ('lip packs') and the vital (personal memory, the passage of time) forces a confrontation with the quiet despair that underpins daily existence.
Cold Snacks and Lip Packs is a document of internal landscape, rendering visible the process of sitting with loss, navigating inertia, and finding a strange, static solace in the pause between breaths.
Matt Scott Barnes
Sunday Sunday Sunday
Wheatpaste, Watercolor, Acrylic on panel,
11in x 14in x 1.25in
At the intersection of nostalgia, generational continuity, and quiet acceptance of one's place in the present moment. The title, appropriated from an era of hyperbolic media promotion, is ironic, framing the work as a weekly ritual rather than a spectacular event.
The visual narrative is anchored in specificity: the muted colors of morning cartoons providing a backdrop to a growing awareness of self, a ritual repeated even as the viewer physically ages. The inclusion of my father's brand of cigarettes serves as a tactile link to lineage, a complex inheritance that bridges the gap between youth and adulthood. This is a quiet acknowledgment and honoring of the individuals who shape us, a mandate to "give respect to the ones around you."
The work grounds itself in the immediacy of fleeting pop-cultural hope. It’s a shared, almost superstitious wish for a specific outcome: hoping they give the ball to Mike Gesicki. This fleeting wish highlights the ways we invest emotional energy into the trivialities that provide comfort and routine.
The auditory underpinning of the piece is crucial. Listening to Whatever, Forever's "Bury Me" provides the melancholic yet resolute soundtrack to this quiet Sunday morning. The work is a meditation on stasis and continuity, documenting the gentle, inevitable process of becoming one's own person while carrying the weight and the gifts of those who came before.