The Offering Creature, by Andrea Matta Schaal
20″x16″; acrylic and photo on canvas; 2016
By M.Gouldhawke, November 30, 2023
A year and a couple of weeks ago, Matta passed away. She was someone I hadn’t kept in touch with or seen in a few years but also a person I had immense respect for and who impacted my life in a crucial way.
I first met her in 1999 in Victoria, BC, at the anti-capitalist Power of Unity conference and the connected Reclaim the Streets action (also a global event).
She approached me, a complete stranger, and went out of her way to make me feel included and to try to help me get involved. Some months later I ran into her again at a similar event. She remembered me, even though I don’t quite understand how I could have been memorable. Again she went out of her way in an effort to help me figure out what the heck was going on and how I could fit into it.
Over the years, I would see her at events, social and (anti)political, and she was always warm towards me. She was also a major source of inspiration for me by virtue of her own personal strength, enthusiasm and commitment to her projects and to her community (including her artwork and her collaboration with the Beehive Collective).
Back in 1999, I was still very new to the larger world of anti-capitalism and anarchism. Matta was the first person who really made me feel I could belong in that world. In a sense, I owe a lot to her and she’s contributed to anything positive I’ve managed to do. I’ve never met anyone else as welcoming as her since, or for that matter anyone even remotely like her.
I extend my respect to her family and community, to those who’ve been most impacted by her, and I want to recognize her contribution to the global struggle for freedom and for a livable planet.
I’ll continue to remember her fierce and compassionate spirit and I’ll keep wishing that more people would take heed of her approach to life.
Matta describes her work…
[excerpt from article and interview by Roberta Pagdin in ‘The Flagstone: Denman’s Village Voice’, May 2017]
“The series begins with beautifully rendered pen and ink drawings and grow in scale, transforms into the moody raw expressions of my mixed media paintings, the element of collage and surrealism bridges both.
Firstly I map terrain through photographs, taking images of objects that speak as metaphors and I cut meaning into them. They are rearranged and recontextualized and by doing so, the images create a new language. Through this de-generative process, I find regenerative meaning. Always, I find a story emerges.
I’m fascinated by the seemingly infinite variation of form and structure, its as if the photos are the cells in a body which can take many forms. You will see this in my work, the same image in a new context changes the story being told. How a tire can be a symbol for a fossil fuelled world, and also a swing, turned from industrial waste to play thing. I introduce you to bones that are ancestors, wings that bring flight to things that don’t usually fly.
My work takes shape through this act of collage, either as reference for my earlier drawings or more recently used directly on canvas. The expressive and raw action of the paint on canvas is itself an act of liberation, the freedom of movement, the moment.”
– Matta Andrea Schaal
Andrea Matta Schaal profile at Kolaj: An International Directory of Contemporary Collage Artists
In Memoriam: Matta Schaal’s images from the Earthfold