Tell us a little bit about yourself.

So my name is Matt, i just turned 19 and I currently live between New Fairfield, Connecticut, and New York City. I was born and raised in Brazil, but moved to the US at the beginning of the year. I’ve always been in love with traveling and that’s an invitation I’ll never refuse. Besides drawing, I’m really into music and cinema too, sometimes (quite often) I’ll just lock myself at home for 3 days and spend whole afternoons in my home studio and late nights drawing and watching netflix.

What is life like in New York? Do you find yourself inspired by such a centre of arts and culture?

Well, life in New York is something completely out of the movies. Yes, it’s chaos and everybody’s always rushing like they’re late to get somewhere but at the same time it’s just beautiful, everywhere you go you’re astonished by the architecture, the people, everything. If you just stop and pay attention to the cathedrals on 5th ave. or the buildings around central park, I mean, I might be easily impressed but I think the beauty of NY is something that you just can’t ignore. I feel like every time I step out of my apartment I run across a building, a sculpture or even a stranger, there’s always this voice in the back of my head saying “Oh wow, I should draw that”. So I guess that’s my way of saying that New York always inspires me.

When did you first start drawing?

I can’t actually remember a time in my life where I didn’t draw, but I probably started taking it more seriously when I was around 12 or 13. I never took drawing classes though, because the whole school environment makes me a little bit anxious, and sure it’s a lot harder to learn how to do something by yourself but I find it less frustrating.

What does your artistic practice entail?

I own like around 300 different pencils and a lot of different tools but the ones I’ll use 90% of the time are:

- Staedtler 0.05mm mechanical pencil - Mono Zero 2mm eraser - Staedtler 6B and 8B pencils and blending sticks.

Also I probably have around 10 or 15 sketchbooks in different shapes and sizes, but my favorite size are the A3 sheets.

Where do you find inspiration for your pieces?

I’m on tumblr a lot, and I follow a lot of photography blogs so I’m always looking for different pictures and different faces to draw, but I mean, that’s just one place, I’ll look from billboards on the street to my friend’s instagram photos and if I think it might look good in a sheet of paper, I’ll draw it. But, I don’t really think I could name one “go to” place for inspiration, i think that inspiration just comes to you, sure, it might be easier if you know what you’re looking for, but sometimes I’ll be watching TV and a trailer for a movie will come up and I’ll see the one person that has a very interesting look and I’ll go for it.

What do you do when you’re not drawing?

I’m very into photography, movies and music, so, chances are, I’m watching netflix while setting up my living room to take photos or just recording something in the studio. It’s in my future plans to start uploading my photos and music on kouzin but as of right now that’s all I can say I guess!! 

You also have a passion for cinema, do you ever find influences from films that you try to cultivate in our own artworks?

Yes!! I have such a passion for movies, it’s something that I get from my mom, me and her will literally spend a whole day watching movies and another whole day talking about them, even know that we’re 5 thousand miles apart, we’ll still facetime each other to talk about movies we’ve seen! But I definitely take inspiration from movies, a couple of my favorites actually, Black Swan and Donnie Darko, I remember making dozens of sketches on my school books of those movies.. I guess i have find my old books to recover them!

Do you have any artistic role models or favorite artists?

Sure. I love Alison Harvard’s paintings, the photographer David LaChapelle, movie director Luc Besson, there’s this one guy from Germany (I think?!) Toni Mahfud, whose drawings are amazing, I can’t even describe it. Also, I couldn’t not mention my cousin Amanda that introduced me to the world of photography, and for that I’m so grateful. And my friends, two of them in special, Isabelle, whom I’ve been friends with for the longest time, she’s that type of person that I can brainstorm with, so we’re always bouncing of of each other ideas for photos, songs, drawings, I mean, everything. I just know that whenever I need an idea, she’ll be there to help me. And most recently, Owen, who’s such a good friend and a great photographer, and I really admire the passion that he puts into his photography, he pays attention to every little detail and that’s something that I think it’s really important, that I can look at a photo and know how much time and effort he put into that. And I mean, that’s just the tip of the iceberg, I could spend a whole day talking about people that I admire and people who inspire me, but these are the one’s that come to my head when I think of role models or my favorite artists.

Can we find you anywhere else?

Absolutely! Main website is Kouzin.us Instagram is @mttalves Twitter is @itskouzin Facebook.com/itskouzin