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In the U.S. Army’s Eleven Bravo (11B) ground combat infantry, Matthew Gilliland was the only true visual artist in his outfit.
Today, he may be the only bust-down-doors-and-blow-things-up soldier in his Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Oklahoma.
That was OK with him then and is now. In both organizations Gilliland was and is committed to being the best he can be.
He holds associate degrees from Tulsa Community College and the Art Institute of Dallas and a BFA from Rogers State University. Last semester was his first at OU and already he’s demonstrated success both as an artist and student. Our tax dollars are footing the academic bill for this veteran who had just completed basic training when the USA went to war after Sept. 11, 2001.
“I did my part for Uncle Sam and now he’s honoring his end of the deal through the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill paying for me to be here,” Gilliland said. “My first art job was working as a product designer for a toy and novelty company for several years.”
He decided on graduate school after discovering a fondness for teaching art both at the high school level and with Pinot’s Palette, a franchise based enterprise in the “paint and sip” industry.
“Being an art educator is clearly what I was meant to do and want to do,” he said. “I want to be the best artist and educator I can be. OU professor Jason Cytaki was a big reason I wanted to come here over any other program.”
Gilliland was a child artist. A friend rocked his fourth grade world with a gift of a Marvel Comics book featuring X-Mens’ Wolverine.
“Flipping through those pages and seeing the amazing art work and story-telling made me want to be an artist,” he said.
Graduate school is giving Gilliland an opportunity to reinvent himself again. He has a passion for military history and the impact religion has on society. Gilliland is a docent at the Oklahoma National Guard Museum formerly called 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City.
“My visual arts interests are an intersection between my love of art and history. Iconography and that meeting of the sacred and profane,” he said. “I do egg tempera painting which was done in the Middle Ages. Religion and history are my two big artistic inspirations.”
In Gilliland’s OU studio are a pair of striking paintings he did portraying WWII GIs whose original imagery came from photos he saw at the 45th Infantry Museum. He has a fine eye for naturalistic detail that recalls the great 20th century American realists.
“Jason Cytaki has been more than I hoped for as a mentor and professor,” he said. “And OU professor Sohail Shehada is so good, I can only aspire to do work as good as his one day.”
Graduate readings have broadened his understanding of the meaning of reality in ways he wasn’t prepared for.
“It has been an overwhelmingly good experience,” Gilliland said.
Focus on concept versus attention to technical proficiency varies among staff and his student peers.
“I hope it comes across in my work that I care about the craft and technique of painting,” he said. “Many seem to be concerned with the message or the conceptual side. It just depends on who you ask. Some want to know what life experience I’m speaking from or to in my art. It’s two different value structures at play within the department.”
Gilliland is enjoying the cross-current dynamic and is open to all that’s coming at him in a challenging program that he feels privileged to be part of.
“Right now it’s just having the opportunity to play with different ideas,” he said. “There are medieval influences and then I try to do some more conceptual art work, tight portraiture and some still life. It’s nice to be able to try out different things. In the life of an artist sometimes you end up just doing whatever the work is that day. Whatever someone is paying me to do or whatever I’ve got to teach my students. It’s nice to have the breathing room to try and to fail. In only my first semester I’ve had a lot of encouragement. This is the place to try things.”
Keen instructional eyes have pointed out that some of Gilliland’s techniques have fallen flat.
“No massive failures, but some conceptual missteps,” he allowed.
Gilliland described the MFA program as being profoundly cooperative.
“I meet with my fellow graduate students at least once a week,” he said. “We have talks where people present what they’re working on right now. It becomes a huge collaborative round table, offering advice and feedback. In a way, everybody in the program has become a mentor to me. The other students feel very much like professors to me. There’s not a huge separation from them and the faculty in that way.”
Undoubtedly Gilliland provides similar counsel to his peers. The early forty-something has a little gray in his beard and is able to share some life experiences unfamiliar to most in the School of Visual Arts. Right out of high school he was learning the discipline and skills necessary to destroy our nation’s enemies. Punctuality and work ethic among those have served him and others well.
“I was not prepared for how collaborative the process was here at OU,” he said. “I also was unaware that off-campus Norman is such fertile ground for artistic opportunity. There’s so much going on in the arts community that I miss out on a lot of it. That’s a great problem to have.”
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