Nothing is Ever Left Behind

I’ve moved through a lot of mediums over the years — drawing, painting, photography, film, ceramics, and now candles. Each time I’ve shifted, I’ve wondered if I was abandoning something. It took me a long time to realize that every change wasn’t an ending, but a continuation. The materials evolved, but the questions stayed the same.

Drawing taught me to pay attention — to line, to rhythm, to what happens in the space between marks. Photography taught me how to frame time, to notice how light moves across surfaces. Filmmaking taught me to build atmosphere — to think in layers, sound, and sequence. Ceramics grounded me in slowness and repetition, in the quiet honesty of the hand.

Now, making candles feels like a culmination of all those gestures. I’m still drawing, but with scent. Still editing, but with wax and flame instead of images. Still sculpting, but in something that’s made to melt. Every pour feels like a small film scene, every cooling surface a frame of stillness.

When I first started MFA Candles, I worried that I’d left something behind — that choosing to make something functional meant I’d stepped away from being an artist. But the more I work, the more I see how everything I’ve ever made is connected. The same instincts that guided me with charcoal or clay are what guide me now when I mix oils or design a label. Each medium has been teaching me how to hold a feeling longer.

That’s what I love about creative practice: it accumulates. It remembers. The hand learns what the eye forgets. The old work doesn’t vanish; it becomes part of the foundation for what comes next. Sometimes I’ll catch myself smoothing the top of a candle and realize it’s the same gesture I used when trimming the lip of a bowl. The muscle memory remains. The art just changes temperature.

I don’t see candles as a departure from my past — they’re a continuation of it. A way to translate everything I’ve learned about image, form, and time into something that lives and disappears all at once. Nothing is ever truly left behind; it just takes on a new shape, a new light.

Matty