Matthew Stradling is a renowned fine artist, and one of Britain’s most accomplished painters of the male nude. He graduated from Central Saint Martin’s art college in the 1980s, and the first piece of art he ever sold was to filmmaker Derek Jarman.
From an initial concentration on the gorgeous, sumptuous images of the male nude that exemplify his early work, Stradling has developed and concentrated his craft to focus on darker subjects in recent years via a highly successful venture into the realm of photography.
“I think of myself as an artist who is gay,” he says. “I believe that art should be completely honest and come from your heart and the truth of your life and what you’ve experienced, and my experience of the world is from a gay man’s point of view… I, as a gay man, am slightly outside of the norm, therefore I am able to critique from an outsider point of view. And relate to other people who are outsiders.
“Throughout the history of art, so often the woman has been the passive subject, the thing that you adore, that you look to, and I guess in some ways I wanted to re-gender that tradition and put the male in that position and yes, subvert that whole idea of the male as the heroic and a doer… Many of my images are of wounded men, or passive men and I’ve done a series of boxers recently with bloodied faces, so it’s like defeated men, which is in our tradition of imagery, in the images of Jesus and saints. I reference those religious images a lot, but by giving it a different twist: it’s actually about vulnerability and hurt.”
As well as a painter and photographer, Stradling is also a DJ, throwing the alternative queer music party ‘Fagz’ with author Jonathan Kemp on the first Thursday of every month at Vogue Fabrics.
• To read the full QX interview with Matthew Stradling on his art, sexuality and the gay community as it stands today, visit: qxmagazine.kinsta.cloud/blog-event/in-conversation-with-matthew-stradling/
