Gold strike – Alchemical artist lets his paintings shine

Demond Matsuo’s voice is gilded. There is a warm sparkle like gold leaf over the inflections of this Morgan City native who utters phrases borrowed from fifth-century poets and Viennese secessionist painters.

His temperament, likewise, seems like loam brushed with honey. There is both a common and exceptional quality to Matsuo and to his art. They are as raw as they are concocted. As someone who considers his work an exercise in “alchemical illustration,” it is fitting that his own career has taken ordinary elements and created something more rare. In this way he embodies the paradox that is art: the collision of base ingredients mixed and molded into something we ultimately come to see as precious.

Matsuo’s latest work, and possibly his entire portfolio, is an homage to the masters. He takes on the frantic claw marks of Cy Twombly and the fractured anatomy of Picasso.

“I like to make the kind of paintings I could not afford and would want to be surrounded by,” he says.

In previous work Matsuo openly mimicked the ornate vestments of Gustav Klimt out of sheer admiration and lifted the contortions of Egon Scheile, adapting what he calls Scheile’s “confidence and arrogance in a line.” The results of such imitation, however, belong to exclusively to Matsuo.

“I don’t want to make work that is simple and repetitious—that’s boring,” the artist says. “I want people to be surprised by it every time.”

It is likely that the mash-up of classics, spiked with “little secrets” of his own, is what has kept his work fresh and inspired price tags into the thousands. Matsuo’s paintings sell for 10 times what they brought a decade ago. Ann Connelly, who represents Matsuo, has largely influenced this price increase.

“I’ve been with Ann Connelly Gallery for four years,” Matsuo says. “I don’t like pricing my work. She does it, and I like that. I want people to have my work. I want to just give it to them. But I remember the owner of Rue Cou Cou telling me a while ago, ‘You have to start thinking about what these paintings are worth. You have lived a life.’”

Travels to New York, Spain and India have certainly punctuated his journey. Matsuo recalls his time in Los Angeles, sleeping on a bench for months, befriending a drug-runner in Turkey, and his stint at the art co-op 200 Government Street in Baton Rouge all with equal measures of sweet nostalgia. His growth as an artist points to several influences outside of Louisiana, from Basquiat to Hokusai, but he effusively credits local artists as inspiration.

“Robin Durand was very important to me as an artist, because we used to do collaborative live art paintings at the Spanish Moon,” he recalls. “We would paint from 10 p.m. until two in the morning. It was more like dancing. Charles Barbier is another big influence. I remember showing next to him at a show in the Union Gallery, and I was so eager to meet him. This was the guy who painted Jesus on a nuke!”

Despite positive experiences with professors like Ed Pramuk and Michael Crespo, Matsuo left LSU and paved his own way into an art career. He shares the walls of Connelly’s Gallery with those who took a more traditional route.

Now, mellowing into his adulthood, Matsuo cherishes the time he has to work.

“I get to paint what I want and not to live, not to just make rent. I can take my time because the process is very long. Time is just different now. I’m more reclusive, and I’m not trying to compete. I’m just trying to be expressive.”

By playing the role of the sorcerer’s apprentice, the self-proclaimed alchemist, Demond Matsuo, has done what every artist tries to do—turn the alloy of paint and canvas into gold. He has succeeded.