“Believing in the Unbelievable and Rendering the Fantastic” is my motto. Working in several different mediums, I create the visions that spring up from dreams, nightmares and the literary works of my favorite authors. I am Matthew Nims Taggart and I have been painting in the realms just outside of our mundane world for twenty years, and can find no better place to be than hunching over a work of my creation, deftly capturing the images of worlds that weave through my minds eye. Images that are oft times lost in the haze of mist that tends to escape our scrutiny as we go throughout our day, normally only catching glimpses out of the corner of our eye; in the shadows of blue and Payne’s grey cast by old foliage, or within the roiling mass of thunderheads puffing up in windy protest, or even within the blinding glint of a thousand fragmented suns off of choppy waters on a cloudless day.

        I was born and raised in Bountiful Utah and spent all of my childhood and teenage years growing up in an old Victorian house that was nick-named "The Haunted House of Odell Lane" and despite it's namesake was the place where I kicked around on an acre of wilderness that saw me as a pirate a cowboy a space traveler and what ever else my busy imagination could dream up. I'd spend my warm summer days climbing all the many trees on our land, I would call out a gusty Tarzan call and save Jane from a fierce tiger or fiendish cannibal or I would go exploring in the crumbling and ivy-grown ruins of our seventy five year old cement swimming pool which any true archeologist would tell you was actually an ancient Mayan Temple.

        My influences are many and no less important in that they have influenced thousands of other artists. Frank Frazetta must receive top billing. As much as his name is mentioned, I must give him due credit for inspiring in me the desire to paint to begin with. Others that have struck my art strings are Michael Whelan; Don Maitz; the Hildebrandt Brothers; Brian Froud; Norman Rockwell as well as many others. To them I owe a debt of gratitude. It is my fondest wish to create images that tug on your soul’s cord and impart to you the joy of the adventure, the thrill of the moment or even the chill that raises the hair of your nape. I want my paintings to not only please the viewer, but to tell a story as well as raise one’s interest. One such piece is “Never Look Back”. In that painting, the rider is leaving the city behind him, but risks one last look, thinking perhaps of the woman that he’s left behind; the woman in the moon? But at that moment a mist suddenly swirls up and the horse is frozen, unable to alert it’s master as a demon rises to the attack, taking the rider unawares. In life it is easy to look back and think of what could have been or what should have been. To reflect and dwell on the past often times means that we stop going forward and stagnate, and all the woulda, coulda, shouldas will not get us anywhere but stuck in a rut, letting the demons of our past dictate our future. It is a reminder that what’s gone is gone and the best we can do is to seize the day and look forward to tomorrow.

        While I was a student at SLCC and I liked to enter showings now and again. I submitted 4 pieces to the "All Utah Open" Show at the UVSC Woodbury Gallary. I took Second Place for Gargole Tower in the Pen and Ink Catagory, and Second Place for Hole in The Wall in the Oil and Acrylic catagory.

        I was very pleased to learn that accompanying the "All Utah Open" Exhibit, another presentation entitled, "Dreams and Fantasies - Original Illustrations" with art by Greg Hildebrandt, James Christensen, Don Maitz, and other well known artists would be on display at the same time. I have never seen so many Greg Hildebrandt paintings in one place....very exciting.

        In the previous year (2001) in the student art show at SLCC I took Second Place in Illustration with Drifter.

        Last year (2002) I received the Community Choice award with Giant's Apprentice in the student art show at SLCC.

        I am currently participating in Science Fiction Conventions. You never know what will happen next! Thank you for visiting my web site.

Matthew Taggart