Matthew Cauchi

An interview with Matt Cauchi.

Matthew Cauchi is immediately likeable. He loves his works, and at every turn he delivers sentiment that bursts with passion and a kind of unbridled giddiness. When he says “I just really f-ing love painting, and I’ve always felt that my stuff is good,” the tone is not that of arrogance, but of a man who knows he’s on the right path. His language is littered with good-natured expletives, which I’ll leave out here, but if you’re of the mind to, I’d recommend you imagine them back in. Polymath, businessman, café-owner, dreamer, artist – welcome to the world of Matt Cauchi.

Your artwork is super layered and textured, talk me through how you got to that technique and why it feels good.

“I’ve always painted untraditionally - I have no formal training, but I’ve always painted. I’m obsessed with (Brooklyn-based contemporary artist) José Parlá. I’m infatuated with his layering and texture. I feel like I have a really good aesthetic eye for composition, for what looks good and what doesn’t. 

I’ve always really searched for a specific style. When I first started, I was really influenced by Ben Frost’s work; lots of pop stencil work. As I got older, I wanted my work to get more mature. The scene and the market I want to be involved in requires that. If you want to make a living from art, you need to be playing in a market where people respect the price tag that comes with your time, your expertise, your eye, your materials. 

I always have my eye out for compositions and materials that are beautiful to me, and I’ve gone after them – I can’t tell you the looks I’ve got from taking those posters down off the walls or telegraph poles, but it’s worth it – there’s often something so beautiful  in the layering of those posters; people have gone over them and over them with their own stuff, and there’s a moment where the rain’s got to it and the ink has run, and then the ink will dry, something else will happen,  the paper will wrinkle or tear, you know, I love that. I love finding those things and putting them on canvas, and I use everything. Plaster, cement, acrylic, sandpaper, polish, paint stripper, paint thinner, whatever I can get my hands on that will create a reaction. I’ve figured out over time where to put paint over plaster, what to sand, when to paint over something wet or dry, when to use a paint scraper to bring something back. It’s taken a really long time to figure out the best ways to do stuff.”

Your Instagram says you’re inspired by the decayed buildings and graffitied roller doors of Japan, and the rough old walls of Rome, which I can see in your work. What about those do you love, and do any other inspirations make it into your work? 

“I’m obsessed with what weather can do to a wall. And I’m always thinking, how can I do that? How can I do it quickly? How can I take what’s taken 250 years to do through the natural elements and put that on a canvas? I love street composition, I see buildings all the time, and how they fit together.

I’m really lucky in that I have a lot of things I’m passionate about - music, hospitality, business, tattoos - those things aren’t mutually exclusive to art, so I don’t have the desire to live that artist life of struggle and my art be a reflection of my life. It’s not. I just really love painting. I think my paintings look really cool, and its stuff that I would want hanging on my wall, and, I’ve found out in that last 12 months, stuff that other people want hanging on their walls. But I’ve always felt that my stuff is good. There’s no meaning my behind my art. I enjoy painting it, I enjoy the process of finding something that’s incredibly beautiful - there’s no hidden angst. The avenue to do that is through texture and through built up layering of stuff that looks messy, but made beautiful.” 

Do you have a plan for each piece, or is it an intuitive, “see where it goes” situation? 

“I usually have an idea of something I want to make or recreate, but things don’t always go as you want it to go – you can spend hours on something, working it and stripping it back, and at the end it looks like rubbish and you’ve wasted 10 hours. But the beautiful side of that is, because I’m not a fine artist, I’m not working to a pre-determined end product, so I have the flexibility to say when it’s done. I’ve had paintings I did a year ago, and I’ll go back and paint over them entirely, and that’s completely fine too, because honestly, it’s just pretty mess on a wall. It’s just paint and texture, it doesn’t have to look a certain way.”

How does your art work look its best?” 

“I love working in big scale, so my work looks best on big walls where it can be the focal point and personality of a room, where the texture and colours have space to act as the point of difference they were designed to be, to enhance a room and give it life - even though it doesn’t look it, it’s really finessed, really considered, and there’s heaps to look at in each piece. Typically, I ask Ditty to put them in a floating frame in a neutral timber so it finishes off the painting without taking the eye away.” 

What does the future hold for Matthew Cauchi? 

“I just want to paint, at the end of the day. I want to be putting them in beautiful homes. I would love to live in a huge warehouse with super high ceilings where I can paint and create, just create beautiful paintings, with the flexibility to hang out with my dog and my family. 

In the art world, I would like a name for myself. I would like to be collected, I want people to go “I want one of your paintings, so badly” and then to give me the freedom to do what I do, to let me put the love into it that I want to. I want them to hang it on the wall and say “we love coming home to it every single day, it gives us so much joy.” I love being at home, I love having beautiful things, having character in my home, and I’d like to be part of the character of other people’s homes. 

When people ask me what I do, I’d love to call myself an artist, a painter. Even from a little kid, art is the one constant thing in my life, this thing I’ve always been infatuated with, I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember, more than anything. I’m not naïve though. I know that there are politics there, I know that it’s a business, I know that it takes time and good branding. But behind it all, still, there’s this beautiful moment when I’m starting a painting, and I can sit down, I’ve got music playing in the background, I’m sitting up against this shitty messy wall, and I have a cup of coffee in my hand and there’s old posters everywhere, and in that little moment, that’s as close to a feeling of “this is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life” as I’ve ever had before. So, my end goal for my art is to feel that, more than I don’t feel that.”

Interview by Erin Short

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