Dave Matthews is primarily a self-taught assemblage, mixed media, and abstract artist who grew up in Oklahoma in an old house filled with antique furniture and junkyard curiosities.  He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1994 for a work assignment and never left.  His foray into art began in 2014 after retiring from a large corporation. He is influenced by the female form and his daily observations. In his abstract work he strives for balance and symmetry and highlights the beauty of wood or stone. He often uses cherry wood and finishes the piece using the labor-intensive French polishing technique. His work also includes assemblages incorporating found or secondhand materials; such as fabric, dolls, hair, glass, jewelry, acrylic, photographs and mirrors. In his free standing assemblage sculptures, his love of classic and antique wood furniture often finds him using the curves and crevices to depict the female form. 
He began to show his work in 2016 and was selected as one of five artists by the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (Marin MOCA) as an emerging artist of Northern California. Since then he has been showing his work in the Northern California area. 

Artist’s Statement: 

Local dumps, roadsides, flea markets, thrift stores and lumber yards provide the raw materials for my assemblage, mixed media, and abstract sculptures.  Seeing and handling discarded objects triggers memories from my childhood as well as adult life experiences. I try to capture these thoughts and emotions in my work. In particular, I’m drawn to the curves, color variations, and texture of wood. When using discarded materials I often highlight the blemishes that occur with age, weathering, and use. To me, this provides character and familiarity.  I also work with “new” wood and stone to create abstract sculptures. For these sculptures, the grain and beauty of the wood or stone is highlighted and the pieces hand finished to show the beauty of the material.