Inspiration, Robots and Matthew Lyons

There are some images, which are rooted some­where deep in the memory and have no idea of leav­ing their occu­pied place. Mundane occur­rences, plates, ball-​point pens, tracks of a truck, milk pack­aging design, illus­tra­tions and everything those snow-​storms or the planes of post­mod­ern art are giv­ing us. After a while, those images pile up and at one point they burst in a form of vari­ous cre­at­ive decisions or swarm of thoughts. This is prob­ably what I’m feel­ing now. Why Matthew Lyons? I noticed the work of this young illus­trator a while ago. And from that time, those images are lead­ers in my memory’s store. Inexorable and act­ive. Too often invit­ing to open browser’s book­marks and search for its inter­net nest.

The burst of thoughts I just men­tioned sug­ges­ted a couple of ideas and one reminder, which made me search for a cause of con­nec­tions between inspir­a­tion of the piece, the piece itself and its effect on the spec­tator. What would the work of this artist look like if he wouldn’t know what “2001: A Space Odyssey” or Pablo Picasso is? Of course, it is not pos­sible to answer this ques­tion now. I don’t think artists them­selves can choose what style their work will be – this kind of thing emerge sep­ar­ately, just like the rela­tion­ship between the cre­ation and the inspir­a­tion for it. We get an oppor­tun­ity to immerse in a stream of inform­a­tion, where we need a fil­ter to help us isol­ate what is most inter­est­ing and most pre­ferred by us.

Speaking about Matthew Lyons, vin­tage posters, 70’s fur­niture and interior the whole lot of space-​themed movies come to mind. Most of these movies come from the period of 60’s — 80’s, start­ing with fam­ous “2001: A Space Odyssey” and fin­ish­ing with “Lost in Space” and “The Black Hole”. Astronomical aspects have their charm in their uncer­tainty and grandeur – the size of the uni­verse isn’t easy to com­pre­hend. And yet undis­covered spaces, plan­ets and the hero­ism of the astro­naut pro­fes­sion make us won­der even more. It is obvi­ous that Matthew’s art is inspired by movies, a series of illus­tra­tions named “Movie Title Screens” demon­strate this. It is a com­pil­a­tion of made up movie names, dates, char­ac­ters and implied scen­arios. I wish those movies exis­ted. Well, at least as shorts.

There is not much of inform­a­tion on the author. It is clear though that he is 21 years old and that he is study­ing illus­tra­tion and anim­a­tion in one of Great Britain uni­ver­sit­ies. In the begin­ning, I thought that these works belong to some middle-​age illus­trator, who formed his style dur­ing many years. When I learned the true situ­ation, I decided never trust the deceiv­ing first impres­sion. The con­sist­ent interest sup­por­ted by the tal­ent can give enorm­ous res­ults, even if you are only in the eighth grade. Without a doubt, this young illus­trator doesn’t lack ima­gin­a­tion. A lot of his illus­tra­tions are accom­pan­ied by ori­ginal descriptions.

I’m an intrepid inter­net explorer surf­ing the world wide web. Riding all the best waves from Slime sports to Line flyer. From Neopets to Runescape. One time I got wasted and caught a massive wave surf­ing the world wide web to Newgrounds. Just ima­gine in the future every­one will have face­book and par­ents will spy on their kids going out. I’d have a decoy page. — M. Lyons

Science fic­tion scripts, irony, spe­cific sharp shapes and espe­cially strong retro-​futuristic feel­ing over­lap in the work of Matthew Lyons. This impres­sion is enhanced by mod­ern interi­ors and inter­est­ing color schemes. Robots have an import­ant part too: here they live in their own world, search­ing for some­thing, hop­ing for some­thing. Maybe for the future? The future of robotic Vikings. Or maybe of the artist, giv­ing them a spark of life. It looks as the illus­trator is flour­ish­ing in self-​created space of already passed ages. Well, to most of us some things are already for­got­ten, and con­tinu­ous space odys­seys don’t look to be some­thing so dif­fi­cult to reach.

I think Matthew has cre­ated an inter­est­ing, cre­at­ive strategy, from which we can learn a lot. When major­ity of things already look self-​evident, and almost any­one can have his or her per­sonal robot, maybe it is worth to look back for a while and try ima­gin­ing, how would our world with its details look to a per­son from 1973? And nobody can say for sure whether in far future robots from Matthew’s illus­tra­tions will make a large amount of population.

About author:

Aleksandr Pasevin
Aleksandr Pasevin is Art Pit’s strategist and designer, responsible for organization’s creative solutions. Aleksandr is also actively interested in new technologies, their connection with creativity and usage in cultural organizations. Aleksandr dislikes long discussions and considerations, and he mostly expresses his opinion quickly about whet... Read further >