In Conversation With Matt Eley: Imperfection, Language and Living With Words
- Rebecca Nicholson
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
Matt Eley is a UK-based contemporary artist known for his text-led canvases that explore imperfection, time and the emotional resonance of language. With a background in graphic design, his practice emerged as a deliberate move away from digital perfection and towards physical consequence. Working with layered, worn surfaces and restrained palettes, Eley’s hand-painted phrases sit in the space between humour and discomfort, inviting reflection, recognition and quiet connection within the home.
In an era shaped by polish, optimisation and endless revision, Matt Eley works with consequence. After decades in graphic design, Eley found himself acutely aware of how much modern creative practice is built around control.
“My job was to refine, align, and resolve things until they were clear, functional, and approved,” he says. Over time, that relentless pursuit of perfection began to feel disconnected from lived experience. “The work looked right, but it did not always feel true.”
Digital environments allow for constant adjustment, mistakes erased, outcomes softened. Risk, Eley realised, had become optional. What he missed was resistance.
From Control to Consequence
Moving into physical, tactile practice was less a departure than a correction. “I wanted resistance,” he explains. “Surfaces that push back, paint that does not behave, marks that cannot be fully controlled or erased.”
Unlike pixels, a canvas remembers. “A wrong move doesn’t disappear,” Eley says. “It becomes part of the history of the piece.” That permanence, he believes, reflects how life actually unfolds...not in clean layers that can be toggled on and off, but in accumulations: edits, scars, and moments that remain visible beneath the surface.
His canvases are built up and worn back repeatedly, echoing walls that have been painted over for years. The result is work that feels lived-in, even when newly made.
Why Imperfection Matters Now
Imperfection, for Eley, is not aesthetic rebellion buta philosophical position. “Perfection is closed. Imperfection is open,” he says. “Perfection presents itself as final. Imperfection leaves space.”
Cracks, texture and unevenness invite interpretation. They suggest time, process and vulnerability. In a culture saturated with filters and curated identities, Eley sees this openness as quietly radical. “Letting things be raw, off-centre, or worn feels like a refusal,” he says. “It’s my way of saying this is allowed to be human.”
Words That Feel Like Thoughts
Language sits at the core of Eley’s practice, but never as a slogan or statement. His phrases often feel unfiltered, closer to internal commentary than polished declaration. “A lot of them start as internal thoughts,” he explains, “the kind people don’t usually say out loud.”
Some emerge from personal experience; others are overheard fragments or culturally familiar lines, subtly reframed. What matters is the tension they hold.
“I’m interested in the space between humour and discomfort,” Eley says. “A line might make you smirk at first, then sit heavier the longer you live with it.”
That slow reveal keeps the language alive.
When Simplicity Carries Weight
Phrases such as So far, So good, or Doing what I can with what I’ve got, feel deceptively plain. Their strength lies in what they leave unsaid. “The words work when they feel simple but carry weight,” Eley explains. “If I can say it quickly but it opens up meaning, it’s usually right.”
He is careful not to chase provocation for its own sake. “If something is provocative but shallow, it doesn’t last,” he says. “My goal is not to attack the viewer. It’s to meet them somewhere real... even if that place is uncomfortable.”
Against the Weightlessness of the Digital
In a world where language is endlessly scrolled, replicated and discarded, Eley believes words have lost mass. “Words online are becoming increasingly weightless,” he says. “You can scroll past hundreds in minutes.”
Painted by hand, language behaves differently. “When words are painted, they occupy physical space,” he explains. “You can see hesitation in a stroke, pressure of the hand, moments where things went wrong.”
That physicality demands attention. The words stop being content and become objects, something you live with rather than consume.
Living With Difficult Truths
Not all of Eley’s phrases are comforting. Some sit openly with vulnerability or emotional tension. Yet he sees people choosing to live with those words as a form of recognition.
“Not every honest thought is uplifting,” he says, “but naming something can make it lighter, or at least shared.”
Rather than irony, the act becomes reflective. The work allows space for the full emotional register of being human.
Time is embedded into Eley’s canvases. “I want the surface to feel like it has a past,” he explains. “Even if it was made recently.” The erosion is intentional, a way of allowing memory to exist within the material itself.
Language, he notes, works in much the same way. “New thoughts layer over old experiences,” he says, “with memories still half visible beneath the surface.”
Restraint as Design
Predominantly monochrome, Eley’s work resists decoration. “Limiting colour keeps the focus on the language and the surface,” he says. While commissions may occasionally call for colour, it is never ornamental. “The language has to remain the anchor.”
In a culture obsessed with finish and performance, Matt Eley’s work offers something quieter, honesty with texture, words with weight, and art that is unafraid to show where it has been.
This is a sponsored editorial feature created in partnership with Matt Eley.
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