Meet the pioneering painter behind the Artist Support Pledge

‘A purpose-built studio is every artist’s dream,’ says Matthew Burrows, standing in his East Sussex garden and gesturing at the fantasy made real. An airy, high-ceilinged structure that he designed himself, it is surrounded by a bucolic idyll of expansive views and roaming chickens. This belies the rigour with which Matthew approached the project. He calculated the distance he stands from a canvas when painting, assessed his storage needs and then created one room for drawing and preparing canvases and another for painting – ‘both exactly no bigger than needed’. He made the trolleys that hold his equipment and even the chairs: ‘I reason that if I can paint a painting, I can make anything.’

The same can-do attitude led Matthew to set up the Artist Support Pledge (ASP). This theoretically self-propagating Instagram initiative has forever altered the shape of the art market, allowing the acquisition of works directly from artists for no more than £220 (the original limit of £200 was increased in September). Conceived as a paradigm without self-benefit and initially as a means of generating income for those who needed it when galleries were shut during lockdown, it has since, Matthew says, ‘become more about connecting people’. Rather than usurping the traditional model, it feeds into it: ‘Artists who have taken part in the ASP have seen their gallery sales go up – myself included.’

Matthew’s own work is also about connection, specifically with nature. ‘I’m an endurance runner,’ he says. ‘When you’re running, you become conscious of your pace and your rhythm, as well as the landscape and your place within it.’ The artist’s notebooks contain sketches of the East Sussex countryside, elements of which he combines with grid-like forms that he equates to a heartbeat. He paints on jute: ‘It is very coarse, very tactile – painting is not just visual.’ The size necessitates a certain vigour – and, more practically, a ladder.

There is admirable functionality to Matthew’s practice, along with an asceticism that places him in canonical lineage with the romantic landscape artist Caspar David Friedrich – who also designed pieces of furniture. Returning to the subject of the Artist Support Pledge, Matthew explains that the price he set ‘is what a plumber or a plasterer would charge for an honest day’s work’. Both are skills he has – and has employed in making this studio.

Matthew is represented by Vigo Gallery, SW1: vigogallery.com. His show ‘In and Through’ is at Wellington Arch, W1, until January 8: english-heritage.org.uk. Artist Support Pledge: artistsupportpledge.com