Education

  • ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA 1989, Film Program
  • ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, CA, 1978, Photography & Imaging
  • San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA ,1976, Drawing & Painting
  • Otis College of Art & Design, Los Angeles, CA, 1975, Drawing & Painting
  • Chouinard Art Institute, California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, CA, 1974 Drawing & Painting

Bio and Affiliation

Matthew Rolston is a commercial and fine artist who lives and works in Los Angeles. Rolston’s practice encompasses photography, film, creative direction, hospitality development, branding, product design, fine art, publishing and arts education.

While still a young art student and emerging photographer in the 1980s, Rolston was ‘discovered’ by American artist Andy Warhol, who immediately commissioned portraits for his New York-based magazine Interview.

Thus began an extensive career; since that time, Rolston’s photographs have been regularly published in prominent magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, and over 100 covers of Rolling Stone.

Known for his distinctive lighting techniques, Rolston has directed award-winning music videos for artists as diverse as Madonna, Janet Jackson, Beyoncé Knowles and Miley Cyrus, as well as extensive print and television campaigns for a wide variety of globally recognized brands including Campari, Bacardi, L’Oréal, Revlon, Esteé Lauder, Elizabeth Arden, Gap, Polo Ralph Lauren and Burberry.

Rolston has directed over 100 music videos, 200 television commercials, and conducted literally 1000’s of photo sessions over the course of his career.

As a creative director, Rolston’s first hospitality development project was for Los Angeles-based hotel and restaurant owner Sam Nazarian’s company SBE Entertainment Group. Called “The Redbury”, Rolston was deeply involved in every aspect of the project, from the naming to the logo, from design concepts to marketing strategies. Since that time, Rolston’s other hospitality clients have included Mahmood Khimji's Highgate Holdings, Richard Branson's Virgin Hotels and Barry Sternlicht's SH Hotels & Resorts.

Matthew Rolston’s photographs have been the subject of numerous exhibitions throughout the United States and internationally at institutions including The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, CA; The Barbican Art Gallery, London, UK; Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA; The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

Rolston has exhibited at galleries including CAMERA WORK, Berlin, DE; Diane Rosenstein Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA; Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA and Ralph Pucci International, Los Angeles, CA.

In 2024, a key set comprising twenty selections of Rolston’s early photographs entered the permanent collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The acquisition was led by Getty Curator of Photographs Paul Martineau. Rolston’s works are also held in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Museum of Modern Art, NY (MoMA), and the National Portrait Gallery’s Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture at The Smithsonian, Washington D.C.

In 1998, Rolston endowed the “Matthew Rolston Scholarship for Film and Creative Direction,” at his alma mater, ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California. Rolston remains actively involved in this program as a mentor and lecturer on the subjects of modern communication techniques, fashion aesthetics, luxury brand strategies and social impact messaging in the public interest.

Since 2015, Rolston has served as an adjunct professor and curricular advisor to ArtCenter’s Undergraduate and Graduate Film Departments. At ArtCenter, Rolston has conceived, written and currently teaches two classes in communication technique – The Power of Pleasure: Decoding the Art of Visual Seduction and Conscious Communication: Media with Meaning. Although both classes are formally situated in ArtCenter’s Film program, they invite class members from diverse disciplines including photography and imaging, creative direction, fine art and other departments of the college.

To recognize the significance of Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, another key Southern California institution formative to Rolston's artistic development, he established the "Matthew Rolston Scholarship Fund for Product and Fashion Design at Otis College". This fund is dedicated to supporting the education of students in product and fashion design at Otis, with a particular emphasis on communication and creative direction practices.

In 2024, Rolston was appointed senior lecturer at Otis College, where he has turned his attention to object design and development, authoring an original class entitled Vessel of Dreams: The Packaging of Perfumery, in collaboration with Otis’ Assistant Chair of Product Design, Jonathan Fidler. The class explores the narrative possibilities of luxury fragrance packaging. 

Rolston’s production offices are in Beverly Hills, California. He continues to divide his time between photography, fine art, publishing, filmmaking, creative direction and arts education.

Portrait of Matthew Rolston

Professional Accomplishments/Exhibitions

Rolston has created four photographic fine art projects that have led to a series of publications and exhibitions.

  • Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits consists of monumental portraits of an historic collection of ventriloquial figures housed in the Vent Haven Museum in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky, and was Rolston's first self-assigned photographic series.
  • Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles is a retrospective of Rolston’s editorial magazine portraits from 1977 to 1993. Edited by long-time Los Angeles–based gallerist and curator David Fahey, this series presents an array of portraits that capture the 1980s and its myriad talents. From Michael Jackson and Madonna to Prince, George Michael and Cyndi Lauper, the selection of images reflects the era.
  • Art People: The Pageant Portraits is a series of emotionally intimate portraits of the elaborately costumed volunteer participants in “Pageant of the Masters”, a tableaux vivants show that is part of an annual arts festival that has been held in Laguna Beach, California for over 80 years. The project features dramatically scaled color prints: one installation alone is over thirty feet wide. This work became Rolston’s first solo institutional exhibition on the West Coast when it opened Summer 2021 at Laguna Art Museum.
  • Vanitas: The Palermo Portraits is yet another dramatically scaled portrait series, this depicting Christian mummies from the 17th through 20th centuries housed in the Capuchin Catacombs of Sicily. The project, which has not yet been published or exhibited, represents Rolston’s continuing evolution as an artist and is an attempt to elevate his portraiture to a conceptual level.
  • Selected group exhibitions include Beauty CULTure (with Lauren Greenfield, Herb Ritts, Andres Serrano, and Carrie Mae Weems, 2011), The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles; The Warhol Look: Glamour, Style, Fashion, curated by Mark Francis and Margery King (with Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Robert Mapplethorpe, Steven Meisel and others), The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1997); and Fashion and Surrealism, FIT Gallery, New York, 1987 (with David Bailey, Horst P. Horst, Man Ray, Bruce Weber and others), which traveled to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London in 1988.

Publications

Five monographs have been published of Rolston’s work:

  • Big Pictures, A Book of Photographs (1991), is a collection of early work with an introduction by director Tim Burton, published by Bullfinch Press, New York.
  • beautyLIGHT: Pictures at a Magazine (2008) is a survey drawn from twenty years of Rolston’s celebrity portrait photographs published by teNeues, Germany.
  • Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits (2012), is a fine art project comprised of portraits of ventriloquial figures, published by Pointed Leaf Press, New York
  • Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles (2017), is a mid-career retrospective, published by teNeues, Germany. 
  • Matthew Rolston, Art People: The Pageant Portraits (2021), is a museum catalog published by Laguna Art Museum in conjunction with their exhibition.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

  • 2021 
    • Matthew Rolston, Art People: The Pageant Portraits, Laguna Art Museum, Laguna Beach, CA
  • 2018 
    • Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits, Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC
    • Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles, Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
  • 2017 
    • Art People: The Pageant Portraits, Ralph Pucci LA, Los Angeles, CA 
    • Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles, Camera Work Photogalerie, Berlin, Germany
  • 2016 
    • Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits, Camera Work Contemporary Gallery, Berlin, Germany
  • 2014 
    • Talking Heads: The Vent Haven Portraits, Diane Rosenstein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 
  • 1991
    • Big Pictures, Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
  • 1987 
    • Matthew Rolston: Magazine Work/Photographs, Govinda Gallery, Washington, D.C
  • 1982 
    • Matthew Rolston/Portraits, Jennifer Dumas Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
    • New Hollywood Portraiture, FOTO Gallery, New York, NY