FINE ART AMERICA, September 2008

The articulated surfaces in Angel Matamoros’ painting, “Rue St. Philip” suggest the slate, stucco, and weathered wood of Creole cottages in the French Quarter of New Orleans. Subtly delineated color fields are plumb and square, perhaps doors and shutters. A humid mist of diffuse sunlight implies cool shade behind the picture plane. The faint borderline between the burnt orange and amber compels my eye. Its left-hand turn adds counterbalance to the vertical dominance, giving the colorful forms a new sense of direction and magnitude beyond the proportions of the canvas. Such minimalism requires nuance, gesture, and a mathematically precise intuition. Matamoros has all of those bases covered.

A historic plaque in “Calle D Borbon” plays a formal role in this rectilinear composition, balancing its bright orange vertical counterpart while providing an anchor overall. The semiotics of its text engages the viewer’s cognitive faculties despite the urgency of the fiery orange plume above it.

Ragged flares interlace the edges of the color blocks – not unlike an aerial map of the Louisiana delta – as the orange consumes the rich and fertile darkness. The depth, warmth, and potency of these colors are enhanced by Angel Matamoros’ craftsmanship, evoking a sense of weathered resistance to time in the distressed glaze of the surfaces. The deep pigments disperse colored light, whereas the loud, lively orange radiates its own heat like the celebrated nightlife of the French Quarter that resonates around every corner of this compelling canvas.

With its warm character distilled from the environs of southern Spain, “Madre Patria I” is as representational as Matamoros gets in this series of paintings. There is a sense of vastness as the eye penetrates the atmospheric depth beyond the sunny golden sidebar in the foreground and the warm cloudy radiance of sky above the horizon line. A regiment of small magenta squares gain pillow-like volume as they rise to extract color from the sky.

These square pills rise above the horizon while floating on the same plane as the golden pillar that holds the picture plumb. That column of light stops just short of the horizon allowing the eye to traverse the entire width of the picture giving the viewer a distinct perspective relative to the vertical markers. The golden back painting visible beneath the scratches and scrawls of the mottled surface, gives a vital translucent frisson to this splendid work.

Angel lends his fine sense of harmony and proportion to the color fields in his paintings. He instills a spiritual essence that persuades even disparate elements, edgy or diffuse, into blissful coexistence.

-Gary Peterson, Fine Art America, 2008

CITY ARTS MAGAZINE, August 2008

Color! I am bathed in rich, glorious color as I admire the work of Angel Matamoros. His multimedia paintings have a way of evoking emotions with color, plain and simple. But it is more than that. It’s in the balance of color. Or is it in how he can throw you off-balance? His paintings are grounded; they are of the earth, they are luminous and they draw you in.

Then there are the words (often, it helps if you are bilingual). He frequently layers his colors over printed text.

Matamoros seems unable to escape text, much as Mondrian couldn’t escape the line. He paints when he is not illustrating the pages of our city’s largest newspaper: His award-winning graphic work is seen daily by hundreds of thousands. That work is refined, amazingly detailed and, of course, surrounded by text.

His paintings are his release, free-flowing and expressive. As they likely bring balance to his life, Matamoros’s paintings offer us intriguing settings for reflection.

- Carlos Taylor-Swanson