Wayne Matthews is a figurative painter whose work engages critically with South African social, historical, and cultural narratives. His canvases are populated with figures drawn from observation and imagination, placed in settings that carry the weight of collective memory and contemporary tension. Matthews is interested in the ways in which painting can function as both a form of historical testimony and a site of imaginative reckoning. His Ampersand Fellowship year deepened his engagement with international painting practices and provided valuable critical distance from which to examine his South African subject matter.
The Ampersand Fellowship
Since 1997, the Ampersand Foundation has sent more than 300 South African visual artists to a funded residency in Tribeca, New York — connecting them with one of the world's most dynamic art ecosystems.