Materials in all paintings: powdered pigment, Golden's Acrylic, Golden's Extra Heavy Gel, Gypsum, Lascaux Varnish, Graphite, Pearl Iridescent pigment, on canvas over Luan

We are Spiritual Creatures with deep longings for a Perfect World but finding ourselves in a cursed world. We want to do things we would like but rarely can. We want things to work out and function perfectly but instead we find snags, integrations, and breakdowns. We want people to help us but they often don't and hardly ever the way we would like them to. We want to be totally trusted and to trust others and ourselves but in fact we cannot. C.S. Lewis said, "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

These paintings are from a group of work started in 1999 and through 2004, which deal my own yearnings of heart and soul. Burning Desire – The passion and fire within that cannot be put out, only directed, obediently towards God but is often directed towards this world and self eventually consuming me. Memory's Floor #25 – which is the vague memory of the beach in heaven I left when thrust into this world and, via God's Mercy and Grace will find myself washed up on when I awake after my last breathe. Bequia Airport – From my windows series looking out and up to the sky, which lifts my spirit and gives me hope.

Matt Baumgardner

email: baumeye@hotmail.com

Burning Desire #8
2003
30" x 30"

Memory's Floor # 25
2003
35" x 32"