The Metamorphous of Matthew Foley Our Butterfly.

 From the time I was seven I had a camera in my hand, loved taking pictures of anything and eagerly waited for the film to be developed so I could see the results. However, I did not see photography as a profession until I had an opportunity to participate in the Ontario Futures Program during high school. This was the mid nineties and like many of my peers I was feeling uncertain of the direction my career should take.

The Futures Program provided me an opportunity to work as a photographer’s apprentice for three months.  That experience became the intersection of my where interest in photography crossed the realization that this was to be my chosen profession.  For the next decade I continued to develop my skills both independently and as an assistant for many well regarded professional photographers in Toronto. 

My experience with the Futures Program not only gave me the opportunity for self-expression – and with that, a sense of purpose, but a sense of gratitude for that community support.

I have approached my art and my work with a sense of sharing and ‘giving back’.  I have had the occasion to exhibit my work at the St. James Town Arts and Culture Festival. This turned our to be an important learning opportunity early in my career.   Being a young white male who grew up in the suburbs, I stuck out like a sore thumb in this high-density, deeply diverse immigrant community. The interaction I experienced in and with the community was magical.  It was then I understood that Art helps us over come many boundaries. I vividly recall the twinkling eyes of the many people who weren’t yet comfortable with their English but who responded to my work.  As for those people who I did have conversations with, I found that sharing my perspective and my inspiration enriched both of us.

After a few years of freelance photography and working as an assistant, I saw an opportunity to grow through formal learning.  I was accepted to Ryerson University’s Image Arts program, with a specialty in photography.

Ryerson was a holistic and personally rewarding experience. Our days ranged from studying production, art history and theory, to how to exhibit work and run our businesses.  It was a very fertile time, full of possibilities.  During this time I began experimenting with collage and assemblage, using my own considerable photo library. The sources included everything from family portraits and fashion to studies of the urban landscape and the characters it attracts. These lead to creating curious and sometimes edgy work with emotional heft.

Travel has influenced my work as well and I have be fortunate to enjoy New Zealand, France, Holland, England, the Caribbean and of course across Canada.

I have been very fortunate over the course of my career to work with many of the best commercial and editorial photographers in the city.  I worked on everything from product shoots to album covers to book projects (like the series on Las Vegas wedding chapels). Some of my other projects included interior design, fashion, magazine editorial, travel brochures, and documenting the work of local designers and artists. 

All of this work did more than just pay the bills – nearly every project I worked on opened my eyes to a side of life I might not otherwise have seen and gave me inspiration for my own artistic exploits.  

I have been invited to speak to classrooms high school students to share my journey and hopefully inspire them into finding their way and doing what they love.

I enjoyed many successes working in commercial photography, but my temperament is that of an artist.

I began to keep a scrapbook journal.  Before long, my scrapbooks developed into sketchbooks and my whole way of making art began to change and evolve.

I now have dozens of these books filled with several hundred collage sketches using a variety of techniques -  cutting, folding, tearing, and taping photos to create new ways of seeing what many people call “everyday” things.  The collages always had plenty of room to breathe, as they floated in the middle of a giant scrapbook page. 

Through this process I have been able to inject meaning and emotion into the images and the journals are a valuable means of self-expression that offer a unique perspective to the observer.

The smaller collages have since given way to a variety of larger-format productions: giant, thickly-laminated floor pieces, computer scans, lacquered, three-dimensional collages encased in shadow-boxes, and – my recent focus – larger scale collages on canvas, using scissors, tearing, glue, and lacquer to give my photos depth, texture, and emotional weight.  

I am also working on a collaborative project with my two brothers – a book project that marries my scrapbook entries with poems written by Sean Foley, bound in a volume designed by Adam Foley.  In the short term, we are working on a website to

showcase the project.

In summary, photography has been my calling in life; my camera has been my closest companion, my instrument of exploration and a way of working things out.

I started tearing and folding and taping original and found photographs into scrapbooks.

I filled volume after volume with my studies and collages, until each one looked and felt like a well loved, epic pop-up storybook, held together by an unchanged metal spiral. A portrait unfolded thru this process of the pressures and pleasures of this rare, flawed, and beautiful existence.

I’ve come to cherish the sense of touch, of contact with my pictures. The photographs and the feelings I have about them become more vivid as I sculpt them with my hands, find the folds and the tears, the places to cut, the parts to weld to the surface. These canvases are my carefully crafted reflections on the things I have experienced so far. Nature, relationships, pain, loss, determination, love, time, growth, change, beauty, and ugliness – these are the things I feel in my bones; they are the soul’s lifeblood; they are the ultimate unifying truth.

If my eyes, my heart, and my hands can somehow connect you to that, well then, how fortunate am I.

Present Day

My body’s capabilities are changing daily, however through out my journey on the ALS Express my mind will be untouched. I still continue to create art as best I can, and I am open to changing my media and my method as my physical needs change.

More than anything, I see my work as an open book. I have no secrets – only a way of feeling and of expressing those feelings.  My art is a growing, living thing – where it goes from here is anybody’s guess. 

I believe that by sharing my art with others in a creative community, I can inspire them to explore new horizons in terms of their own emotions, their craft, and I can be inspired by the things they have to share with me.

For me, the act of creation is a sacred thing and it’s 100% positive.  There’s nothing else like that in my life.                                                      

                                                                                 Matthew Foley, BFA                                                                                                            Toronto Ontario                                                                                                                     December 2010.

On September 27, 2006, Matthew’s 30th birthday, he first heard the diagnosis of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease (www.alsont.ca).

In November 2006 Matthew was definitively diagnosed. ALS is a neuro-muscular disease for which there is no known cause, nor any cure. It normally affects adults between the ages of 55 and 65. The outcome over on average 3-5 years is death.

Matthew lives and works in a very special artist’s community in Toronto, known as Artscape at the Wychwood Barns, under the care of his personal care team of 4 young men who provide him with care 24 hours 7 days a week.

His courage and determination is a constant inspiration to all who know him with his many friends calling on him to support him and also to bathe in his love and compassion for them. A past love visits him with her daughter and thanks Matthew for teaching her how to love.

He is an inspiration to friends of mine who have terminal diseases. They always ask me how Matthew is doing and they tell me how thinking of him enables them to make the most of their lives.

Matthew continues to work on his art everyday except when the weather is so beautiful that he has to be outside for a prolonged time. How he works with virtually useless arms and hands I do not know. All I know is that his work is ever more beautiful and a salve for one’s troubled soul. He is planning his next show which will be his narrative on nature and how valuable it is to his well being knowing full well that what is deeply personal is also universal he believes that all will resonate with his feelings.

Early on what Matthew refers to as his journey on the ALS Express he told me that this disease has given his life meaning and purpose. An interesting reflection given that I know for a fact that he has never read Viktor Frankel’s “Man’s Search for Meaning”. In this work Frankel credits 3 sources for meaning and purpose in our lives, our work, our family and the courage with which we face adversity. There is no question in my mind that while Matthew draws meaning from his work and his family his fountainhead is his courage. 

 Matthew has made many regrettable decisions in his young life but his character values have come through unscathed and they support him on his journey.

Top Strength: Appreciation and Beauty

Second Strength: Curiosity and Interest in the World

Third Strength: Honesty, Authenticity, and Genuineness

Fourth Strength: Bravery and Valor

Fifth Strength: Gratitude

Sixth Strength: Creativity, Ingenuity, and Originality

I have noted when my mother and father passed away how odd it felt to be among people who were unaware that they had walked among us. Thank you VIA for this opportunity to let all who read this document know that Matthew is walking among us!

Brian Foley

Matthew’s Father

Toronto, ON

January 2011