After the 2016 presidential election, Matthew went into a self-imposed exile, severing ties mentally and physically with the rampant germination of fascism, police harassment, and political injustice developing in the United States. Upon leaving New York City via a one-way flight to Paris, Matthew sought out and was eventually embraced by the Parisian avant-guard, stumbling into cafes, alley-ways, nightclubs, and museums with successful artists of the millennial age. Desperate for artistic self-sufficiency on his own terms, Matthew's pilgrimage to Paris fulfilled a life long ambition of continuing the same rite of passage his Modern Age idols undertook some one hundred and fifty years earlier.

However alluring, the enormity of the City of Light would draw too many similarities to the seven years he had spent in the Empire City back west. Within a matter of months, Matthew would be boarding a train en route to the smaller village-like surroundings of Amsterdam, where he would eventually settle to begin painting with a liberated soul free from the monetized oppression of his native country. Returning to America, armed with canvases in hand, Matthew aims to establish his place in the annals of art history with works currently exhibited in several exhibitions in Chicago and the surrounding area. Including his first solo show “A Post American Dream” in 2019.