me and my best friend used to always skate the park at Kalamunda, a suburb across from where i lived in a little town known as Lesmurdie, somewhere in the hills far far away.
we were the biggest frothers and were always caught trying to do stairs and chairs at the Kalamunda highschool.. anyways on one fine day we met some older boys at the park 3 to my memory, two were named Matt and another called Tom, they skated good, really good. We looked up to them and they always chatted to us whenever they were there... which was pretty cool since we were just grommets and chicks that couldnt skate that well. One day Matt and Tom invited us to come stay for the long weekend at their beach house in Mandurah, holy smokes.. a beach house? rad! we were an hour from the coast and used to catch 2 busses and a train to get to the coast to go bodyboarding and skate the roundie at Scarborough beach and eat maccas.. ha the days.. we soooo wanted to go but our parents said no so we had to decline...
many years later i went to one of my first art exhibitions, a gig called "cha ching" down south put together by a guy called Luke Thomas, a talented local surfer and artist who wanted to help a cause which was youth suicide if my memory serves me.
from across the room i saw a face i fully recognised but with his interesting hair cut and attire i was a bit shy to say hi...
it was inevitable we would bump into eachother but turns out it was one of the Matts from back in the day.
Matt Doust. that was it.
in a geeky voice he was like " i know yoo"
yeah same goes and what do you know 6 years later and im still looking up to him.
if you dont know Matts work you will want to. i cant even explain it, but i remember the first time being seriously blown away. at the time i was throwing down sketches of nude chicks so it kinda creeped me a bit to see he was scratching the same itch.
but i think he broke the skin..
well he definately has now.
Congratulations Matt, after a series of group and solo shows hes finally off to the big apple where all shining stars get that little bit shinier. If you didnt know Matt also won the prestiged peoples choice award for the Archibold Prize for 2011 which is pretty fucking nuts and a $10,000 purse.
A big inspiration for me when I was younger and still to the present.
check out his work.
“I’m very particular with the subjects I choose, but I could find them anywhere, the street, parties, I once found a model at an op shop." - Doust.
Left - Achibald prize winning piece "White Cocoon"
