Helen Dwyer Matteson (b. 1925-2011)

Helen Dwyer Matteson was born May 25th, 1925 in Chicago. She received her undergraduate degree in History from the University of Rochester in 1946, where she studied music and piano. In 1947 she moved to New York City and took classes at the National Academy of Design and at the Art Student League. It was at the Greenwich House in 1950 that she met Ira. They married in 1952 and in 1958 had their only child, Abby.

Helen spent her time painting and drawing, reading, and listening to music. She frequented museums and galleries wherever they lived, exposing herself to the contemporary artists of her time. Ira said that he and Helen spoke only occasionally about their art, but often discussed the work of others. Helen’s artwork was made privately and rarely shared, except on a few occasions between 1976 – 1982 while she and Ira lived in Ohio, and where Ira taught at Kent State. In 1982, Helen had a solo exhibition at the Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio.

Helen continued to paint and draw when they moved to Thetford, Vermont rarely missing a day from 1994 until her death in 2011. She produced over 400 complete sketchbooks, and nearly 8,000 small format paintings and drawings on paper; 36 individual series, one series with 2,400 variations, all of which are undated, untitled and unsigned by the artist. Helen’s geometric and minimalist forms are imbued with a deep appreciation of the abstract themes of her time. Within the simple setting of her one story home where she lived with Ira, in an alcove with a restive, east-facing view of her lawn sloping towards a thick pine forest, Helen worked with great dedication and created the majority of what remains of her work today. It is in this rural town removed from all distractions that she painted ritualistically, undisturbed, and without regard for audience or outcome.

Peter Eglington (b. n.d.)

Peter Eglington was born and raised within the largest caldera of the Southern Hemisphere in the shadow of Mount Warning, New South Wales, Australia. Throughout his upbringing, Peter, the oldest of three siblings, played in the bush, climbed trees, learned about the birds and the animals of the region, and was deeply immersed in the culture of the indigenous people that helped sustain his family’s livelihood.

Born within a mile of the ocean, he surfed the rugged waters of the South Pacific every day with his dad and his mates—he is an Australian surfer, coming-of-age in the late 1960s. In the early 1970s he was catapulted into his twenties by the activism of the times. Influenced by the psychedelic art and music from the UK and the US, he was swept up into the rapid transformation of the globalization of the world.

He experimented with psycho-active drugs while doodling to the music of Santana, and pouring over the album covers of Abdul Mati Klarwein. Peter’s first job, though short lived, was as a photographer for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation after which he traveled extensively throughout Asia, spending time in Bali, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, the Himalayas, the Amazon and Afghanistan.

Between the 70s and 80s, Peter traveled back and forth to different parts of Asia, and New Zealand to study and develop his artistic abilities, also spending considerable time in the Himalayas. There he says, “began my fascination with the Mandala.” As a life-long student of the world’s great mystical traditions —a Meditator and Vedic Astrologer—he understands the “ancient role of the shaman as artist and the keepers of community health.