This note accompanies A Light in Many Rooms exhibition located at the SFFA Tradewynd Gallery from November 14, 2025 - January 10, 2026
This fall, Matt Klos presents A Light in Many Rooms, a solo exhibition that reflects nearly a decade of painting on location in Staunton, Virginia. His work is deeply tied to his friendships and experiences within a community of painters, including Philip Geiger and his family.
In this interview, Lily Beth Norris, Assistant Gallery Manager at SFFA, speaks with Klos about his time in Staunton, his fascination with interior spaces, and the way atmosphere shapes his work.
Lily Beth Norris: How did your friendship with Philip Geiger and his family shape your time there as a painter?
Matt Klos: I’ve known of both Phil and Liz Geiger’s work for many years. It wasn’t until I was curating an exhibition, A Lineage of American Painters, in 2007 that I first made contact with them. I was invited into their world, which is one that is filled to the brim with painting and deeply engaged with both contemporary and historic artists working in figurative and perceptual modes.
At first, we spoke by phone and email. Later, I was invited for studio visits in Charlottesville and eventually to their new home in Staunton for weekend and week-long visits. We would paint—sometimes together, sometimes separately—and gather for meals to share stories and talk about other painters. Spending time with the Geigers, including Phil and Liz’s son Martin in more recent years, we were singularly focused on painting. I was challenged, fulfilled, and absolutely inspired.
Lily Beth Norris: Interiors are central to this series. What is it about interior spaces that continues to captivate you as a subject?
Matt Klos: I’m fascinated by the way light animates these rooms. As I become familiar with these spaces, I become more aware of their changeable nature. It’s an interesting, seemingly contradictory thing—when you know something well, it actually becomes more complicated, more various, and less knowable in a total sense.
As a subject, the interior is quite complex. It often demands painting multiple light sources and dealing with large-scale shifts. I appreciate the challenge.
Another alluring quality of interior spaces is their ability to elicit memory. Certainly, this is personal and specific, but I believe it’s also universal. Our living spaces and the evolution of the home are ingrained in our psychology. They are places of comfort and shelter. They can be warm or austere, and they can be charged with spirituality, mystery, and fear.
Lily Beth Norris: How does working directly from observation in these rooms affect the mood and atmosphere in your paintings?
Matt Klos: Atmosphere in a painting has to do with a specific quality of light or time of day. It isn’t the same as a snapshot moment—it’s more expansive, but not so broad that the atmosphere loses its specificity.
If you want to achieve a specific atmosphere when working from life, it’s essential to move quickly or revisit the same scene under similar circumstances again and again. These paintings are all made in one session during my short visits with the Geigers. Working very quickly to capture a subject in a specific atmosphere is a supreme challenge.
The great American painter Edwin Dickinson told his students to “paint as though you're jumping on a moving train.” As I work, I often keep in mind another line from Richard Diebenkorn in Notes to Myself: “Be careful only in a perverse way.” It’s risky to approach a subject this way, and it often results in failure—an acceptable outcome in the pursuit of something worth making.
Klos’s interiors are more than just depictions of light and space—they’re records of moments lived, of conversations shared, and of a painter’s deep engagement with place. His time in Staunton is inseparable from the friendships and artistic exchanges that shaped these works, infusing them with both personal resonance and a universal sense of home.