Shyer is the Artist’s Title, its the representation of their Identity in context of their creations. The Artist behind the name Shyer, is Matthew Tedford. Shyness has been in Matthew’s nature since childhood, and it has informed his movements in every aspect of his life.
“SHYNESS IS IN HIS NATURE”
Matthew has always been quieter than most, but his shyness has never dimmed his creative spark. From a young age, he found comfort and freedom in drawing—an escape from the harsh realities of his upbringing and a space where he could express what words couldn’t.
At eighteen, Matthew chose to follow his passion for art and moved to New York City to study Fashion Illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Immersed in the city’s dynamic creative energy, he began to discover his true self. That journey of self-discovery and identity formation continues to be a central theme in his work. Art became both his voice and his refuge, a way to push back against a world that had often made him feel unseen.
Influenced by the rhythm and diversity of New York, Matthew developed a distinct artistic style. His experience in the fashion industry further strengthened his technical skill, adaptability, and attention to detail. Today, his work is bold, colorful, emotive, and meticulously crafted. Portraits, figurative abstracts, and surreal black-and-white geometric patterns appear throughout his portfolio.
Matthew strives to create art that is visually captivating and thought-provoking. His pieces explore the dualities of human experience—loneliness and connection, fear and love, darkness and light. Through this contrast, he expresses his deepest truth: he is an artist, simply a bit shyer than most.
My work begins in the physical world, shaped through traditional media before evolving digitally. Each piece starts as a hand-drawn foundation—pencil sketches that capture the first spark of an idea, inked lines that set its structure, and layers of marker and concentrated color that build tone and mood. This initial version holds the rawness and honesty of touch. After scanning or photographing the piece, I continue to develop it digitally, refining details, shifting forms, and drawing directly on top of the original until the image reaches its final state. This two-stage process allows the work to grow naturally, moving from instinct to intention.
Much of my art explores duality—light and dark, control and unpredictability, vulnerability and strength. I often divide compositions into contrasting halves, using tonal shifts to reflect the inner contradictions that shape identity. The figures I create come from imagination rather than real-life models; they’re expressions of independence, isolation, fear, power, and the complicated emotional space in between. Colors and abstract marks often radiate outward from the body, suggesting a person’s internal world extending into their environment.
“MY ART IS AN EXPLORATION OF MY INNER SELF AND OF HIGHER UNDERSTANDING OF UNIVERSAL TRUTHS.”
Themes from the natural world appear throughout my work—animals, plants, celestial bodies like the sun, moon, and planets. These elements ground both me and my images in something familiar and real. Animals often serve as symbolic guides, offering wisdom, protection, or a sense of home. Their organic forms bring warmth and softness to the composition, creating a visual and emotional contrast to the sharp, geometric patterns and stark black-and-white shapes that represent tension, structure, or the desire for control. These natural motifs remind me of balance, and they anchor my more abstract or intense visual ideas within a larger sense of harmony.
My black-and-white geometric pieces explore another aspect of duality: the pull between order and chaos. Their clean lines and distorted patterns reflect my urge to create structure while acknowledging how easily structure can shift or unravel. Through these forms, I look at how life moves between moments of clarity and uncertainty, and how both shape who we become.
Across all of my work, I’m interested in transformation—how an idea develops, how materials interact, and how identity reveals itself through contrast. Each piece exists in the space between opposites: the physical and the digital, the controlled and the chaotic, what is imagined and what is grounded in reality. In these in-between spaces, I try to capture something honest about the way people navigate their inner and outer worlds.
English