We were lucky to catch up with Matt Ramsey recently and have shared our conversation below.

Matt, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s jump back to the first dollar you earned as a creative? What can you share with us about how it happened?

At 34, I have sold quite a bit of work to collectors and first time buyers as well. However, it took me almost 20 years to get to this point. I made my first paycheck from my art at 17 years old. I had been contacted by a third party on behalf of a man named Ronnie who owned a pool toy company named ‘Red Triangle’. Apparently through a roundabout way they had heard I was a local graffiti artist. I ended up painting a row of filing cabinets for Ronnie’s office with the word ‘Triangle’ in wild style graffiti. Upon completion I was handed $800 dollars and hella props from Ronnie which was the best part. Seeing a customer happy will hook you. Aside, realizing I had just made $800 in 3 hours was enough for to keep the nay sayers words out of my ears.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Matt Ramsey a.k.a Ramsey The Slasher. I came up skateboarding in West Palm Beach Florida and it was my peers who gave me the nickname due to my romance with knives and other stabby things. That, and also my style on a skateboard which some would call aggressive and precise. It was skateboarding ultimately that caused my self induced mental saturation in art. I always made art but it never had any direct intention or identity. I would draw magazine photos of people doing skateboarding tricks that I liked. I enjoyed capturing the quintessential moment of style, the highlight of the body posture and boards position. Those moments no matter from the physical or observational perspective ooze with passionate expression. I started to notice graffiti on the trains while skating in Miami and by the time I was 15 I was painting freights. Eventually I started to conceptualize the style you see today, drifting away from the flat out freight burners and coasting into a more surrealist approach to the scenery around me I had drawn from. In the midst of this I did enjoy a career as a professional skateboarder. I never made it to the point of having signature products but I got to travel and skate with a lot of the pros I grew up watching and that was sick enough! In recent years I have been focusing more so on my art as a serious career. I am married to the only woman on the planet who can handle me, Jaclyn, the strongest woman I know. We have three daughters together, Heidi my oldest who is 10, Greta who is 7, and Rosemary who is almost 2. They are my world, my inspiration and I wouldn’t have the drive I do without my dear girls.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding part of what I do is the reactions people have towards my art. Nothing beats watching someone get nose deep to your work remarking ‘how did they do that?!’

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

One of them is to show others who feel alone that they are not alone. I have an unorthodox approach to what I do. I have faced a lot of rejection and hate on the basis of being misunderstood or not understood at all. I find it difficult to fully explain myself without the proper vocabulary, and even equipped with such prose and wit find myself dissatisfied with the ultimate response received. A relentless and overwhelmingly restless sense of not being fully heard. Fully understood. Screaming from the inside and in every manner possible from the outside to no avail. The futility of it all being lost in translation. Makes it hard for a man like me to define exactly what it is. I just want the people who feel like they are on fire inside to know that I am too, and we share the same skin we desperately seek to escape.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: Ramseytheslasher