THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601180163
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 05 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARY ELLEN RIDDLE
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
IT'S EASY finding out how Whit Matthews feels about his art.
At a time in life when most kids his age are struggling to discover who they are, the 15-year-old deftly summarizes his feelings:
Art is fun.
Whit slid into the limelight recently with triple honors at the International Icarus Art Show last month. His computer artwork, displayed at the Ghost Fleet Gallery in Nags Head, was selected for the ``Public's Choice'' and ``Best Computer Art Award,'' and it took second place in the senior high school division.
He also sold the piece.
Since his first coloring contest win at age 3, Whit has been capturing the judge's eye. He's won multiple art, math and spelling awards. The art honors include local, county and district level wins.
The Nags Head teen has five years of private art lessons under his belt. He loves to paint and draw.
After studying computer one summer at College of The Albemarle, he told his dad they needed one at home. That Christmas, the Matthews family gave themselves a computer.
Whit's been using the computer to create art similar to the winning piece in the Icarus show.
Called ``Dream Flight,'' the work shows an egret flying across a midnight blue sky, carrying Whit's younger brother, Evan. Evan's hands, holding tightly, are buried deep in the bird's feathers as the duo journey past a glowing moon.
To create the picture, Whit manipulated several of his father's photographs that had been programmed onto a disk.
Sound easy? It's not.
Whit had 200 images to choose from. He had to reconstruct one of Evan's arms, because the original photograph had him reaching into a bucket. He created shadow and merged all the components into a workable composition. To make the sky interesting, texture was added to the solid blue.
Making ``fractals'' is another computer art form Whit is experimenting with. These mathematically induced images manifest themselves in abstract shapes and brilliant color. Fractals can resemble infrared images or have a flowing spin-art look.
The shapes are abstract, colorful and textural. Whit joins both fractals and photographs to produce art containing multiple elements of color, shape and vision.
``I don't understand what they are,'' Whit said. ``I just like how they whirl colors around and the designs they make.''
Whit's dedicated experimentation has produced interesting pictures. In one piece, he placed a photo image of Evan flipping over while skim boarding near a picture of shark jaws.
Evan is proud of his big brother. On opening night of the Icarus show, the curly headed 9-year-old proudly informed admirers of ``Dream Flight'' that the small child in the picture was indeed him.
Whit didn't intend the picture for Icarus. It was his mother, Pam, who encouraged him to enter it in the show. She also suggested that her husband, Ray, a well-known local photographer, enter his work.
It was exciting on opening night when both artists captured awards.
Whit plans to use his prize money for a snowboarding excursion in Pennsylvania. In between his regular jaunts on the surfboard and skateboard and shooting hoops on a county team, Whit continues to pursue art.
He notices how his drawings improve over the years, moving from rough sketches to smoother works. Color attracts him.
``I like putting complementary colors together and making them stand out, and putting neat patterns and things like that,'' he said. ``I just like the way colors work together.''
Adorning the walls of the Matthews' home are works created by father and son. The structure of St. Andrew's Church by the Sea was rendered in water color by the younger artist for his mother for Christmas.
His use of shadow and color give the often-reproduced image a unique atmosphere.
Whit believes art and computers will play a role in his future.
Reading comic books helped him become familiar with the human form, but his father influenced him by example. ``He has fun with what he does, and I want to do the same thing - have fun with what I do,'' Whit said. ``Plus, his photographs help me.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by MARY ELLEN RIDDLE
Whit Matthews' won the ``Public's Choice'' and ``Best Computer Art
Award,'' in the 1995 Icarus art show.
by CNB