Painters seem to have more of an in on this existential mystery. Maybe it’s their close relationship with their medium, and by extension, with the creative intelligence. Matthews works, most mornings, in the spacious, calm Tribeca studio he’s been in for seventeen years, with its enormous windows and multiple views. There is a blank canvas on sawhorses, and paintings in process on an adjacent wall. In the spring, he works on the roof, where the light is best. To watch him paint is similar to hearing musical chords that instantly change the entire room, provide access to a different dimension of feeling. There is undeniable beauty and ease in a long-established intimacy with one’s work. It’s a communication built on respect and trust — years of it.
     Because before all this, it was 1985, and Matthews was working a series of restaurant jobs just long enough to save up enough money for paints. Pushing a shopping cart of supplies into the darkness, he went out and did all-night murals in lower Manhattan (painted, no spray paint), which he had to finish before it got daylight enough for someone to spot him. If he had gotten arrested, it would have been because some afternoon he’d been standing in front of his own painting too long, staring up at it, the same incriminating paint all over his sneakers.