Matt Patterson will go almost any distance and do almost anything to learn all he can about his subjects to make his paintings of wild animals as accurate and lifelike as possible. He has been bitten by snapping turtles and caught alligators with his bare hands from a kayak. He has surveyed critically endangered radiated tortoises in the Spiny Forest of Madagascar and in the rainforest of Belize. He has delighted in it all.
From as far back as he remembers, Matt has loved both wildlife and art. He grew up in a small, rural New Hampshire town. In his free time, he was always either out fishing, searching for turtles and snakes, or painting. His father was a biology teacher, and their home hosted a large menagerie of animals, including a turtle named Heathcliff and a pigeon named Mel.
Today, things haven’t changed much. Matt is a professional artist, and he works in a home that he shares with his wife, their thirteen turtles, two dogs, two cats, and two snakes.
His work has twice received the Roger Tory Peterson Wild American Art Award, the Artist For Conservation Medal of Excellence, and the international wildlife art award, The Golden Turtle. His work has also been featured in Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine, Artists Magazine, Yankee Magazine, and other publications. In 2023, he was named a fellow in The Explorers Club.
In 2010, Matt illustrated his first book with his father, David Patterson, who wrote the text, titled Freshwater Fish of the Northeast. This book won the 2010 National Outdoor Book Awards' Design and Artistic Merit category. A few years later, another book he illustrated, The Snake and the Salamander: Reptiles and Amphibians from Maine to Virginia, also won a National Outdoor Book Award for Nature and the Environment.
Matt both illustrated and was a major character in the 2023 New York Times bestseller, Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell. Working with National Book Award finalist author Sy Montgomery, Matt volunteered for three years with a turtle rescue organization, visited and documented the conservation and breeding of some of the world's rarest turtles at the TSC, protected the nests of five species of native New England turtles, and rescued cold-stunned sea turtles who had washed up on the wintry beaches of Cape Cod. The same year, HarperCollins also published Sy and Matt's picture book, The Book of Turtles, which won seven national awards, including a Sibert Honor, a Riverby Award, and a Cook Prize Gold Medal.
This September, the two complete their turtle trifecta with a picture book, The True and Lucky Life of a Turtle, chronicling the inspiring life of a 42-pound snapping turtle named Fire Chief. He had been hit by a car and rehabilitated at Turtle Rescue League with Matt and Sy's help (including a bespoke wheelchair at one point.) Now Fire Chief rules his own pond again.
Matt feels it's crucial not just to document these marvelous species he paints; it's even more important to him to have a hand in saving them from extinction. Among reptiles alone, 196 species are presently critically endangered. That's why he often creates artwork specifically to donate proceeds from its sale for conservation. He's grateful to use his talent to not only raise awareness about these gorgeous animals but help keep them alive on the planet we human newcomers are lucky to share with them.
