Journalist Swisher

from Mountain Democrat, Friday, July 1, 2022

Hawaiian chorus

California’s lakes: Lake Tahoe, Shasta, Trinity, Alpine, Mendocino and Eagle Lakes.

But the winds of ill-fate were not fi nished. Matt and Tricia lost their home to strong winds that drove a fi re through Concow and Paradise, taking all in its path. Gratefully, they were not home that day. When they were able to return to the cite following the fi re, Matt said he looked over the ashes that remained and pondered starting over again. The chorus of a song from the movie “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” came to mind: “From the ashes of disaster grow the roses of success.”

Matt decided he needed to fi nd the roses among the ashes. He gathered charred wood from his studio in hopes of fi nding a way to incorporate the ash in his paintings. The mingling of ash and paint created interesting a ects he uses in many of his works.

Art with purpose

In 2019 Matt and Tricia purchased a home with a detached studio just east of Placerville where Matt has continued to pursue his career as an artist. While enrolled in Making Art Making Money, a workshop to learn how to develop an art business, Matt befriended a mother of a child born with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome. He created a painting of her two children dancing in their backyard. He said it was the most emotional and rewarding experience of his painting career.

Through this friend, Matt met the mother of a daughter with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. When Matt painted a picture of this child standing strong, the mother suggested he create a series of paintings of children with rare disorders and write the stories of their achievements as children with profound medical conditions. Matt has since created paintings and written the stories of children with Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome, EhlersDanlos syndrome, cerebral palsy, encephalocele and hydrocephalus from Colorado, California, Hawaii, Australia and the United Kingdom in his book, “See What I Can Do! Stories of Remarkable Children.”

There are more children with rare disorders waiting to be represented in his book, he shared, adding that he hopes to inspire others to focus on what they can do rather than what they cannot do.

“From the ashes of my studio comes interesting paint colors,” Matt said. “From the ashes of a child born with a syndrome that would otherwise seem unsurmountable comes a family that has rallied around others and found strength to support their child. Rising from the ashes is an amazing child that can really do much more than you might think.”

Besides painting exceptional children, Matt fi nds peace and comfort in painting trees like the oaks growing on his Placerville property because, he explained, they represent strength and courage to survive the storms of life.

He is particularly intrigued by the twisted, weather-beaten branches of the Great Basin bristlecone pine tree. Its enduring strength has earned it a reputation for being the oldest known living trees in the world with some documented to be nearly 5,000 years old. Matt said the bristlecone pine tree survives and thrives in spite of the challenges its harsh environment presents, much like the people who survive and manage to thrive in spite of the harsh challenges they face.

See his works at HuesOfTheWorld.com and on Instagram @mattharline. Matt also plans to exhibit his works with the Placerville Arts Association’s annual Artist Studio Tour in September.