Meet the Artists: Matthew Samson

This story is part of Meet the Artists, a series in which we introduce the people behind the work on our walls in Park City and Sun Valley: how they work, what moves them, and how they got here.

One night, out walking his dogs, Matthew Samson looked up and saw a shooting star. He was already making art from unusual raw materials, “marble dust, sand, and flowers,” as he puts it. The streak of light across the sky gave him a new one. “At that moment, I realized ‘I want to use that,’” he says, “and so it began my ongoing love affair with this element.”

What he wanted to use was the sky itself, or the pieces of it that come down. In the simple terms his own site uses, a meteorite is “a rock that falls to Earth from space,” one that heats up and gives off light as it passes through the atmosphere. His site adds that meteorites “provide some of the only samples we have of other worlds in our solar system,” and that some “contain tiny particles that existed before our sun.”

Since 2011, Matthew has been grinding meteorites, which he describes as “ancient,” into a fine dust and turning that dust into paintings and sculptures. Black, crusted and raised off the canvas, it is the heart of every work of his at GAIA. As he puts it:

“In this process of bringing a sculpture or painting into existence, I get to play with the stars.”

Matthew Samson

A self-taught artist from Las Vegas

Matthew is a self-taught artist, born and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, where he still lives and works. Before the shooting star, his studio materials were already earthy and physical: marble dust, sand, flowers. Since 2011 he has worked with meteorites, making both sculptures and works on canvas.

The ideas behind the work are as big as the material. His site describes a philosophy that draws on “creation myths, cosmology, mysticism, poetry,” and quantum entanglement, and calls his art “a celebration of the continual birth and death of the stuff of the Universe.” Each of his series takes one of those ideas, how planets form, what a shadow is, what a body is made of, and gives it a shape you can stand in front of.

In October 2024 he took that work to London. He showed at StART Art Fair, then in its 11th edition, at Camden Town Hall near King’s Cross, from October 9 to 13, on Stand 08. He describes it as a solo presentation during Frieze week. Looking back on the fair, he wrote that it was “amazing to share with the art community my works using real Stardust (meteorite).”

The material: stardust, marble dust and paint

Matthew calls his medium an emulsion. It is a mix of stardust, marble dust and paint, and by stardust he means meteorite: “Stardust (meteorite) is the main element I use in my works,” reads his Instagram profile. The meteorite is ground down, blended into the emulsion and built up on the canvas, and most of the works at GAIA list marble dust on canvas as well. A few of his pieces go onto raw, unprimed canvas, where the dark mixture sits against the natural color of the cloth.

Why meteorites? For Matthew it is about where we come from. As his site puts it: “Everything has been manufactured inside of a star, including humans. It is the carbon in our DNA, the iron in our blood, and the calcium in our bones.” Working with stardust, in other words, is working with the same raw material that we are made of.

Up close, the surface is what stays with you. The emulsion dries into thick black clusters and ridges that rise off the white ground like a coastline seen from above. Matthew himself says he considers his shadow pieces “more sculpture than painting due to the texture of my emulsion.” Photographs only hint at it; in person, light catches every ridge.

The ideas behind the series

Terraforming. The work that brings the story full circle, from a grain of dust to a whole world. “These abstract pieces are how planets are formed,” Matthew writes. “It starts as grains of dust that circles young stars. Gravity then forces all these materials to collide and grow together over billions of years.” His conclusion: “every canvas is becoming its own unique world.” Across two tall white panels, the black emulsion spreads like continents still taking shape.

Portals. A single ring, and a lot of history inside it. “This sacred circle has been used for thousands of years,” he writes. Ancient people used it in rituals and art, and sat in circles around a fire to pass on their stories. Today, he notes, “theoretical physicists suggest that black holes could be space-time portals; it represents cycles, rotation. This is how a simple circle is connected to the whole Universe.” GAIA has two of them: Portals Series, a black ring on white canvas, and Portal Series, a ring on raw canvas.

Dark Matter Halo. The series is named after the invisible halo of dark matter that surrounds galaxies. Both pieces at GAIA begin with the shadow of a flower. “I capture an image of a shadow and make it out of my emulsion,” he explains, “and the halo is ashes from burning encyclopedias, poetry books, and transferring that knowledge onto the canvas.” In “Daisy” and “Rose with Dead Rose”, the flowers rise in relief from a soft grey field.

Anatomy of a Shadow. Here the idea turns to the sun. “The sun has cast our shadows for thousands of years,” he says, and “now I’m taking that shadow and casting it in what the sun is made of.” In Anatomy of a Shadow, a dark figure stands on a white panel beside a pale figure on a black one, like a shadow and its negative. In Giacometti Shadow, three panels carry tall, thin walking figures. Matthew has not written about that title, but to our eyes the figures and the name point to the Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti and his famous elongated walking men.

Atom Series. Three tall panels, a human figure and dried sunflowers set into the emulsion. The series looks inward. “After a star has exploded, they create the essential elements that appear in everything from stones, butterflies, and buildings, including yourself,” he writes. “In these works, I’m trying to depict the Universe inside us.”

Falling leaves

In his newer work, Matthew has turned to something much closer to home: fallen leaves. They are sycamore leaves, as he notes on Instagram. According to the artist, they come from the sycamore trees in his own neighborhood, where he spent three or four years collecting them from the sidewalks. The squares of the sidewalk, he says, “almost look like canvas to me.”

The idea, in his words, is the moment “when the leaf is actually detaching from the tree.” He treats the leaves the way he treats his sunflowers: “I submerge them in my emulsion, which consists of stardust, marble dust and paint, and then I’ll attach them onto the canvas.” According to the artist, the canvas is marble-dusted too, and the leaves seem to drift off it, “left, right, up, down, doesn’t matter.” On his Instagram, these leaf pieces appear under the name Wind Fall & Stars, sometimes with leaves spilling past the edge of the canvas and onto the wall.

The leaves went to London with him as well. In a video he posted from his StART Art Fair stand in October 2024, a canvas, half black and half white, hangs among scattered black and gold-toned leaves that drift out across the wall and down toward the floor. At GAIA, the leaf work you can see is Stardust Leaf: a single black leaf set against a canvas splashed with yellow, white and black.

The Particle Series: a work the collector arranges

Most paintings arrive finished. The Particle Series is meant to keep changing. Each panel is sold individually: one purchase is one small white panel, 10 x 8 inches, marked with black stardust emulsion (in our photo, one of them carries a hint of gold). Collectors can combine panels and arrange them as they like. Shown together, as in the photo, they read as one work, a field of particles scattered across a wall.

The idea comes from physics. “Quantum physics says everything is made of particles,” Matthew writes, and in this series “they can be created and destroyed.” According to the artist, the arrangement is up to the collector. He wants people to hang the panels “any way they feel it needs to be,” and to “always change them year after year to create a new piece, so they are creating and destroying their particles.”

That makes the collector part of the work. Move the panels to a new home, spread them out along a hallway or pull them into a tight cluster above a sofa, and the piece becomes something new, while every particle in it stays the same stardust. If you are curious how the Particle Series could work in your own space, our team at either gallery will be happy to talk it through with you.

Matthew Samson’s work at GAIA

These works by Matthew are available through both of our galleries. Each one is an original, and the texture of the stardust really shows in person.

See all of Matthew Samson’s work →

From a shooting star on a night walk to the mountains of Utah and Idaho: every one of Matthew’s works at GAIA is available through both of our galleries. Come and see them in person. Plan your visit →

Questions about a piece? Contact us at either of our galleries: Park City 435-731-8376 · Sun Valley 208-973-0137 · Contact us online →

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Sources

• Matthew Samson, “Bio”
• Matthew Samson, “Gallery” (series concepts)
• Instagram, @matt_samson_ (profile)
• Instagram, @matt_samson_, post on StART Art Fair London (November 3, 2024)
• Instagram, @matt_samson_, reel on the sycamore-leaf works (December 30, 2023)
• Instagram, @matt_samson_, reel on the leaf works (February 15, 2024)
• Instagram, @matt_samson_, reel from his StART Art Fair stand (October 7, 2024)
• Matthew Samson, video on his leaf works, shared with GAIA
• Nigel Ip, “Highlights | StART Art Fair 2024 – Camden Town Hall” (October 9, 2024)
• LABOTIV, “Exhibition | StART KX 2024”
• GAIA, Matthew Samson collection