Sally Matthews

I grew up with Sally, she was the first artist I ever knew. Her life was art, a chaotic masterpiece in motion. Other adults seemed to follow scripts but Sal didn’t, which made sense to me. 

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We reconnected a few years ago. Now both as adults, I got to see more of her. Still cheeky as all hell. Her wit, somehow sharper. Kind without compromise and still the life of any room. A real people’s person and Brilliantly mad.  

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Her house is a living cabinet of curiosity. Every object’s got a story, whether gifted, found or made, things are never just objects in Sal’s world. On one shelf, there’s a white-label record. Scrawled in sharpie, it reads: ‘The Lady of Balfour’, A gift from a reggae band she performed with. She showed me that thing as if it were an Olympic medal and told me how she'd been invited on stage and performed her fire poi after sharing a spliff with them outside. The record, a gift and a symbol of the impact she has.

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She’d been dressing up, creating characters. One of them: the Lady of Balfour. A title she wore proudly, and one she’s well known by. We staged her as this to set up the painting, but I knew I was going to cut beneath it.

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Her world is assembled around her, every object deliberate. These are not clues to decipher, but symbols that belong to her alone. This is not allegory. It is autonomy. By preserving privacy, it becomes an act of defiance. She exists without permission.

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