MATTAYA FITTS
Mattaya Fitts is a visual artist whose practice encompasses painting, drawing, photography, and design within a studio and public art discipline. Using a figurative approach with elements of abstraction, Mattaya depicts life in a multi-layered way, inviting the viewer to interpret the work through a lens informed by personal and cultural narratives, the divine feminine, and ecology. Using vibrant color palettes, her often fantastical artworks appear as images in which fiction and reality meet and meanings shift to create new worlds and characters.
Pick up this print at Harvard Ed PORTAL
ARTIST Q&A
Born: Boston, MA
Currently lives: Brooklyn, but work between Boston and Brooklyn.
Title of artwork: Ruby
What’s it about? “Ruby” is a digital painting featuring a woman immersed in a sea of layers of shapes and colors, her colorful lashes inspired by the tiny fish next to her, a candy basslet. As a solitary and rare fish that can be found hiding in the deep waters of the Caribbean, it serves as a visual metaphor for solitude and being immersed in a new/unfamiliar environment. This piece was my first foray into digital illustration, something I learned during quarantine.
Where else can we find your work? Throughout Massachusetts and parts of NYC.
What would your last meal be? Definitely mac and cheese.
Last show you binge watched? The Handmaid’s Tale.
Go-to karaoke song? “Wannabe” by the Spice Girls.
Place in Allston/Brighton that you have missed the most? Urban Renewals! It closed down pre-pandemic.
What have you learned about your creative practice over the last year? What you give to your creative practice will always give back to you, in more ways than you can imagine.
A piece of advice you would give to your pre-pandemic self? Go to that concert/ art show/ whatever in person social event, because it’ll be at least a year before you can do that again. Hug your friends and family. Stock up on hand sanitizer!
