Matt Herring 'Nature's Alchemy I' Print Available

Artist: Matt Herring
Title: Nature's Alchemy I
Medium: Framed Gold Leaf on Giclee Print
Size: 26 x 26 Inches
Edition: 95
Price: $1,683

Matt Herring is a British painter who turns the everyday into the quietly extraordinary. Born in 1986 and raised in rural Oxfordshire, he studied fine art at Oxford Brookes University, where he began recording the subtle dramas that unfold along hedgerows, canals and backyard fences. Working in oil and acrylic on panel, he builds luminous surfaces through patient layering, allowing under-painting to glow through translucent glazes so even a concrete path seems lit from within.

His subject matter is deceptively simple: a discarded crisp packet snagged on cow parsley, a supermarket trolley half submerged in a pond, pigeons quarrelling on a rooftop television aerial. Yet Herring renders these scenes with the reverence once reserved for grand history paintings, inviting viewers to reconsider the dignity of the disregarded. Colour is central. Muted earth tones suddenly ignite with a flash of cadmium red or cerulean blue, echoing the surprise of sunlight on broken glass.

Composition is carefully balanced. Canvases are often square, referencing Instagram’s format while slowing the eye to linger on texture and temperature. Negative space breathes around objects, so a single crisp packet floats like a religious relic against an expansive sky.

Recent series Nature’s Alchemy, available through The Rose Gallery, explores the strange chemistry between litter and landscape, transforming discarded cans and wet cardboard into glowing artefacts. Each piece is finished with a high-gloss resin coat that reflects the viewer, implicating us in the scene.

Whether painting a flooded allotment or a fox silhouetted against sodium streetlight, Herring captures the fragile moment when the ordinary becomes quietly miraculous, reminding us that beauty thrives in the overlooked corners of daily life.