Matthew Herget: Creation in Life, Art, and Food
Getting to know the artist behind the art at popular Miami restaurant, Ghee Indian Kitchen.
Miami-based artist Matthew Herget has a deep understanding of himself and life which materializes in the authenticity of his artwork. He recently hung his largest ever oil painting at Ghee Wynwood, the second highly anticipated location of Ghee Indian Kitchen based in Dadeland which has earned multiple Michelin Bib Gourmond awards. Herget’s first commissioned piece for Ghee in Dadeland, Abundance, is an intensely powerful oil painting of an elephant pushing itself triumphantly through a dense bed of flowers. His newest piece for the walls of Ghee Wynwood, Abundance II, features multiple elephants in chaotic vegetation, much like the chaos of a successful restaurant, walking out into the space to share their collective wisdom. The relationship between Herget and Niven Patel, the owner and Executive Chef of Ghee, began over a decade ago in the Miami restaurant scene. Before then, however, a lot went into shaping Herget as an artist.
Beginning at two years old, on family trips from Miami to Louisiana, Herget and his grandmother drew side by side, excitedly guessing what the other had created. A designer and interior decorator, she encouraged him to do whatever he dreamed of, especially with art. Their close relationship continued until her passing when he was in high school.
Growing up, he was always recognized as “Matt the artist” at school. It wasn’t until his time at Palmetto High that he truly accepted this as his identity. While art did stay constant for Herget, he struggled to balance his involvement in football and his love of art. His family was very invested in football and, at Palmetto, the team was taken seriously. The sport taught him discipline and kept him from falling into the party scene. Art, however, was always his strongest passion and became an escape from the sport. Eventually he realized that art was his truest self and he let go of football. With the lessons that he learned from the sport, he became his hardest critic and set off to become the talented artist that he is today.
After highschool, Herget went to the University of Central Florida for a short amount of time before telling his parents that college wasn’t for him. There began his journey of fighting to become a professional artist. He moved to California and starved for his craft, bringing him to his current situation of having worked as a full time artist for over a decade.
California brought a lot to Herget’s life. One of those additions was a growth in his spiritual journey in which he explored new routes towards discovering inner truth. To him, everything is a unique expression of the universe. You can sense that he sees all things, whether dark or positive, as ethereal. He told me, when I first asked about his spirituality, “I feel like I’ve died many times in my life.” The joy and peace that he said these words with fully expresses his appreciation of all things in life. He wants to experience even more than he already has and since childhood, has aimed to live to at least one hundred years old (he is currently thirty-three). His art is both an exploration of his own consciousness and a representation of what he has learned from his journey.
His life on the West Coast also brought him the gift of his daughter. He delivered her with his own hands and she has deeply impacted his life. They paint together and, in a picture he showed me of her, I saw her art framed on the walls of his home.
Herget’s own art has evolved in its style and purpose many times. Looking through his website, one comes across colorful abstract paintings, black and white realistic drawings, depictions of animals, and more work that evokes his varied endeavors. Oil painting, though, is a medium that he has always loved as it has persisted in art throughout history. The transcendence through time that oil paints represent is deeply important to Herget. He intends to connect the challenge of using these historic and ambitious paints with the creation of newly imagined work.
His appreciation of different forms of artistic expression has bolstered his success in the modern world. One of his first solo shows at Art Basel Miami featured abstract paintings, images he drew of astronauts which he called “explorers,” and political pieces. Despite this wide variation, which many advised against, every piece sold. He has also gained a large following on Instagram. Early in his career, he drew celebrities realistically but added flares unique to his artistic style. These images would then be reposted by the depicted celebrities which drove people to his account. He received his highest engagement numbers from these posts, a fact that he struggled to grapple with given that he felt he had different things to offer through his paintings. Now, he works towards painting what expresses his soul and learning how to get those pieces sold rather than painting what he knows is guaranteed to appease others.
By the time Herget was already working as a full-time artist, he took a job as a server at Michael’s Genuine (an award winning restaurant in Miami) and met Niven Patel who was working as the chef de cuisine. He was known as “Matt the artist,” as always, and Patel told him that he planned to one day open one of the most unique Indian restaurants in the world. He promised Matt that his art would be all over the walls. Years later, two weeks before the opening of Ghee in Downtown Dadeland, Herget flew in from California to paint Abundance in just ten days. Later on, he added more art to the bare walls of the location.
Abundance II, Herget’s enormous oil painting that sits in Ghee Wynwood, took nine months to complete. The oil paints are the same paints used by Van Gogh, further intensifying his connection to the historic medium. The paint making up the piece will be curing and drying for years. In fact, if you were to cut open one of the thick marks of paint, Herget explained, it would be wet inside. Truly a deep representation of who he is, even his daughter added to the painting. He intentionally painted around her marks so that they would stay visible.
Chef Niven Patel did not ask Herget what he intended to paint for Abundance or Abundance II. He allowed Herget to do what he believed was needed, an act that the artist sees as the ultimate gift of trust. Patel and Herget have grown together. Patel’s restaurant ventures have increased and continue to flourish in Coral Gables, Miami Beach, and Jupiter, Florida. Herget’s work is continuously advancing and strengthening. Just as Patel and Herget have stayed tied in a way that has allowed them to find each other again after so much time, their work intertwines to create a restaurant atmosphere in which people can truly connect with one another.