Mat Maitland

posted by Mel Luff December 12, 2014

With the likes of Michael Jackson, Prince and Muse to name a few, Mat Maitland is an award-winning illustrator and designer boasting an impressive list of clientele. As creative director of London based agency Big Active, he was no longer content with sitting back, overseeing and letting freelance photographers and illustrators do the work for him. His playful neon colleges work ‘in different, yet complimentary ways’ creating an entirely new perspective, through abstracting images and fitting them back together within a different context. It is these collages that have led him to become a world-renowned artist, designer and image-maker in his own right.

Mat describes his aesthetic as ‘pop with overlapping surrealist and cinematic tones’ and his inspiration is born from unusual places: ‘it can be a wave of nostalgia or déjà vu, of a dream you quickly forget when you wake up but desperately try to freeze in your mind’ – evolving his dreamscapes into a more tangible form. From a young age Mat was fascinated with photography, fashion and music and through merging these differing worlds his work seamlessly fuses them, breaking down the traditional barriers that once separated these bodies of art, making them one within a colourfully stylish, surrealist collage.