Matthew Collings is an artist and writer based in the UK.  He was born in 1955.  His drawings depicting an alternative art history have been a massive success and are in collections all over the world, sought after by artists, curators and critics and, remarkably, ordinary people who otherwise wouldn’t buy art.  Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Sean Scully, David Batchelor, Michael Craig Martin are among his patrons.  He studied painting at the Byam Shaw art school in the 1970s, and his history drawings, which are nearly always a modest A4 size, have an extensive parallel in oil on canvas, on a large scale.  These works too are in international collections. His subject matter is the surreal fantasy world of art -- the secret mythologies he believes everyone involved with art has flickering in the back of their minds -- as well as the authentic facts, often bewilderingly mixed.  He treats his own strange life-story as a subject of art history as well.  And he drags in left-wing and anarchist politics.  

Matthew is the well-known author of many books on art including Blimey! The London Artworld from Francis Bacon to Damian Hirst, which was published by 21, a company founded by David Bowie, who commissioned him to write the book as the company’s first project.   Matthew also wrote This Is Modern Art, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, based on a TV series of the same name which Matthew wrote and presented and which won many awards including a Bafta.