Matt Schu: Cat and Mouse

January 10 - February 1, 2026 

Artist Bio:

My name’s Matt, and I’m an artist and children's book illustrator from Portland, Oregon. I’m the illustrator of several picture books including Cut! (CE Winters / Greenwillow); My Cat Does Ballet (Robert Heidbreder / Atheneum); the Cosmic Collisions series by Dr. Marc Kuchner (Candlewick / MIT Press); Star and the Maestro (Thor Hanson / Greenwillow); and I Know the Whale (Robin Yardi / Little Bee Books). I’m also the illustrator of the middle-grade chapter books The Tontine Caper by Dianne K. Salerni and The Islands of Elsewhere by Heather Fawcett, as well as the upcoming Backpack Boy Berlin by Kip Wilson. Among other places, my paintings and drawings have often been exhibited at Nucleus gallery in Portland, in the Society of Illustrators annual Original Art show, and in Portland’s downtown library. I studied art at the University of Oregon, then worked as a graphic designer before switching focus to book illustration and fine art. You can check out more of my work on Instagram (@mattxschu) or on matt-schu.com.


Cat and Mouse:

A few different images have been in my head for a while: moonlight on tree branches, windows lit up in dark houses, and cats’ glowing eyes. So I’ve been making a lot of pictures with these things in them. But when I started adding a human figure to the pictures, I wondered what kind of person would be in these remote and ominous settings. 

In stories, there’s sometimes a character whose main role is to accompany the hero through the events of the narrative, often leading them or nudging them along. For example, Mephistopheles in Faust or Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio are this kind of character. On the surface the hero must think of them as a helpful guide, but really they get them deeper into trouble. 

I thought, before they start guiding a naive character along a dangerous path, they must have to travel to get to the beginning of the story. In this group of paintings I was imagining that time between stories where a character like Mephistopheles would be wandering around looking for someone new to lead on a journey.