Matak’s Marker Mondays with Zig Chalk Marker Faces

Each Monday, Adam Matak posts to Facebook a new portrait of chalk marker faces he “paints” with Zig Posterman markers. An artist, Matak creates lifelike images of the people he knows using Zig markers and a spiral-bound sketchbook.

A trained printmaker, Adam Matak uses the markers, along with other mediums, to create his works of art. He has been exhibited in both private and public galleries throughout Ontario with artwork collected locally and internationally. His work has been used in advertising, an art history textbook, and reviewed in multiple publications.

Featured in the Boston Globe by Correspondent Cate McQuaid April 23rd, 2015

The spring master’s of fine arts thesis exhibitions at local art schools show us where art is going: Artists cross disciplines, often shuffling many mediums. Technique is important, but secondary to concept. Social consciousness is on the rise. Boston art schools have been the breeding ground of top tier artists, including Joan Jonas and Christian Marclay. We visited some of this year’s budding stars at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston University, and Lesley University.

Adam Matak, age 37 – Painter – Training SMFA and TUFTS

You can see Matak’s work in two exhibitions this spring (2015) — his thesis show, and “Some Assembly Required,” a group show in the Museum of Fine Arts’ Courtyard Gallery through Aug. 16. Both utilize his graphic, comic-book style, and convey the tension between history and the present.

At the MFA, he sets contemporary characters against legendary paintings, recycling, and equalizing. In “Allegory of Painting” one man (Matak himself) drags another in front of John Singleton Copley’s “Watson and the Shark.” The figures in the foreground are based on a 1981 Robert Longo drawing. Both images wrestle with peril and rescue. The allegory: Painting is ever being pulled from the teeth of death.

Matak’s thesis show considers…

Read the full story in the Boston Globe, along with eposes on five other up and coming artists!

For more information on Adam Matak, please visit his website. To view more marker portraits, click here.

All artwork (c) Adam Matak, all rights reserved.