The essence of life is suffering.

Matt Clark was born in 1962 on a ranch in Utah. This is a state the size of two-thirds of Poland, which at that time had a population of 900,000. He grew up on a farm in a poor Mormon family. To this day, most of Utah’s residents identify with that faith. In the home, traditional values mattered: faith in God, respect for the elders, and hard work.

In such conditions, far from the big cities, in the dry, fickle, very difficult to live in, desolate, desert-like, rocky state, Matt grew up. Since he was 3 years old, he dreamed of nothing else but becoming the best cowboy in the world. He started riding bulls at the age of 8, and by the time he turned 16, he was a titled competitor who made it to the national finals. To his family and friends, he was a cowboy, always wearing a hat, in long cowboy boots, and staring danger in the face with nonchalance. The girls his age would look at city boys, so it was easier for him to date older girls. His cowboy image worked wonders. A definite advantage was also that they had cars and driver’s licenses — it made a lot of things easier — Matt laughed as he told me this. Focused on bull riding, girls, helping his parents on the ranch, and all the things teenage boys think about, Matt led a life full of dreams of world championships as a cowboy in a remote part of America. When he turned 17, his parents gave him an old Chevrolet pickup. One day he parked it in the driveway, engaged the handbrake, and crawled under the vehicle to make some small repairs. He didn’t know that in this old 1960 model, the handbrake only worked if the car was tilted forward. The seventeen-year-old didn’t need to know this. With the car parked “uphill,” it was immobile. Matt didn’t even put rocks under the wheels. He casually crawled under the vehicle, and before he could do anything, it began to roll, crushing his bones, spine, and pinning his skull under one of the tires. For several more seconds, the car stopped on him, scraping his skull mercilessly on the ground. It turned out Matt had an incredibly tough skull. He survived. He woke up in the hospital. It was 1979. The provincial hospital in Utah did not have an MRI or any modern diagnostic methods. After more than two months in intensive care and six months in rehabilitation, the doctors sent him home to a nursing home, where he was supposed to receive proper care. He was expected to die there, with only three years to live. He was later predicted to die another nine times. For the past 42 years, doctors have predicted his death on average once every five years.

“My body was broken and may not heal, but my spirit can and will overcome my limitations.” — Matt Clark

We met in July 2022. I came to Matt’s home as a result of many coincidences and conscious life decisions, which eventually led me to his doorstep. The chance that a young Polish man, born and raised behind the Iron Curtain, would ever find Matt on his desert Utah ranch was none, but fate decided otherwise. Despite his disability, Matt looks handsome. Broad-shouldered with an intelligent face, he makes a good impression. He moves in an electric wheelchair, and his body is additionally supported by a thick leather vest, which serves as a brace because Matt cannot rely on his spine. It’s an uncomfortable additional load, another inconvenience, in the hot climate where sweat pours down the body in seconds after stepping out of an air-conditioned room. Matt invited me to his workshop, where he can work up to 10 hours a day. The place is full of tools and drawings and sketches hanging on the walls. There is a working order, it’s where art is created, and where magic happens. In the corner of the room, Matt installed a powerful fan. During our entire several-hour conversation, he sat in such a way that the fan was constantly cooling him. As a result of the accident, his body cannot cool itself, and heat can be deadly to him. He occasionally doused himself with water, constantly managing his body temperature. Matt is dependent on his wheelchair, but it’s clear that even sitting is uncomfortable for him. On average, once a minute, he tries to straighten his body, like someone who, after sitting for a long time at a computer, constantly adjusts their position because of the discomfort from sitting too long. For him, it’s a reflex because his spine is too weak, and the brace is uncomfortable. Despite all the limitations, Matt is very active and constantly smiling. He listens attentively but also talks a lot. I quickly realize I’m dealing with an extremely intelligent person who doesn’t force the listener to follow his lead. He remains himself, often laughing, open, yet penetrating and exceptionally well-read. Mostly in the works of famous philosophers. Such experienced and well-educated people often maintain distance from others, adding to their gravitas. Matt achieved a different, highest level. He is warm, listens, and engages in understanding the other person. He is empathetic. For several months after the accident, he could only move one arm. He was seventeen years old and became a “vegetable.” Everything ended. He fell into apathy. Today, he is an acclaimed artist who creates extraordinary sculptures, but his greatest achievement is how he healed his soul and took control of his body.

Medycyna nie dawała mi nadziei na przyszłość, ale coś w głębi mnie mówiło: „Poczekaj chwilę. Zdefiniuj swoje życie na nowo”  – Matt Clark

• Zadziwiasz mnie Matt swoją zaradnością… Mimo tylu ograniczeń tworzysz sztukę i dajesz przykład, jak żyć – powiedziałem w pewnym momencie
• Jak miałem 5 czy 6 lat mieszkaliśmy daleko od miasta.  Mój tata próbował naprawić narzędzia w stodole i przyszedł mój wujek, jego brat, który mieszkał po sąsiedzku. On zawsze na wszystko narzekał, ciągle zrzędził. Spojrzał na mojego ojca i mówi: skąd w ogóle pomysł, że dasz radę to naprawić? Tata spojrzał na niego i mówi „nie widzę tu nikogo kto chciałby mi pomóc chyba, że mogę liczyć na Ciebie?”. Wujek tylko spojrzał na niego i poszedł. W życiu tak często jest. 

“Jeśli sobie sam nie poradzisz, to może nigdy nie pojawić się ktoś kto Ci pomoże” – Matt Clark

• “We say that if you want to count, count on yourself, and this probably applies not only to life skills but also to healing your own soul. Your well-being…
• It’s true. After my accident, I didn’t quickly come to the conclusion that I am the master of my own destiny… It was a long, very slow process. For the first two and a half months, I was in the hospital, and a therapist came to see me. He moved my arms and legs. I made no progress. I felt nothing. The doctors stiffened my forearms and hands so I could reach for things with stiff limbs because I was never supposed to regain feeling in my hands.”I wanted to die. I remember one cold, dark February night. I saw a blizzard through my room window. I wanted to kill myself, but the only way I could have achived that was to stop breathing. I tried many times but one can’t do it this way. “At most, you’ll lose consciousness and automatically start breathing again. I know because I tested it. Several times. Two days later, my mom arrived. She sensed that something had changed, that it had gotten worse. You know, mothers have this strong intuition when it comes to their children. She asked me what I had on my forearms, and I told her that the doctors told me to learn to live with it. I grew up in a community that taught a lot of respect for the elderly. Respect for authority, and my mom was one of those authorities. When I answered her questions, she asked me more. Is what the doctors are saying okay for me? Is it okay, and do I want to agree to it? She started messing with my mind. I explained to her that they are doctors, they are experts, they know what they’re doing, but she kept questioning their diagnoses. How could she question their authority? It was like I started questioning what she said. Eventually, she took off the braces and told me that from now on, we would start exercising. I had to imagine that I was moving my arms. The doctors were furious. They said I was giving myself false hope, that what we were doing, these exercises, was pointless. Throughout the entire time I was in the hospital, on weekends, a therapist, a psychologist, came to see me. She tried to talk to me, but I didn’t want to. She tried to reach me. I remained silent. Her last name was Woobyła, of Chinese origin. I remember, when she introduced herself, I couldn’t get over how strange that last name was. I was a country boy, I didn’t know the world. One time, she told me she had spoken about me with her husband, a Chinese Zen master. I had no idea what Zen was. I was a cowboy. I dreamed of rodeo. What Zen? She then told me that she had a message from her husband for me, and it went like this:”

“Regardless of what has happened to you and what you were later told awaits you, if you decide to be your own best friend and trust the voice of your heart, you will be able to amaze people.” – Anonymous Zen Master

• For me, it was moving. No one had ever spoken to me like that before. These were spiritual truths that I heard for the first time in my life. It’s incredible that I never saw her again. She appeared in my life to give me that thought. Once was enough; it was such a powerful message that I remember it to this day. That’s when I latched onto that thought. I had nothing else. I believed that if I worked hard, I would regain some form of mobility, even though no one gave me a chance of ever being able to move anything more than my arm. My parents believed in me and kept repeating it: “We will fight. We will overcome this, and you will be able to move again.”

“I don’t like the term ‘fight with problems.’ If you’re fighting, you might lose, you have a 50% chance of losing. I prefer the term ‘navigate.'” – Matt Clark

• So I started navigating. I was determined to use a wheelchair. The doctors kept telling me, “No, you’ll never use a wheelchair. You’ll never be able to move by yourself.” Eventually, my parents discharged me from the hospital, and we started a long, personal therapy on the porch of our house. Every day, I practiced to improve my mobility. After many years of work, I succeeded.
• How did your adventure with art begin?
• When I was 8 years old, my dad took me to a workshop where you could order welding of various items. I thought it was amazing, and soon I learned to do it myself. Six years after the accident, it occurred to me to get back into it. I started welding simple things, and one day my mom saw one of them and said that, in her opinion, it was art and that I should develop in this direction. You know how mothers lie to their children… but I felt like I wanted to do it… At one point, I even wanted to get a job as a welder, but every time I was told that I wouldn’t be able to do it in a wheelchair. So, I found a poorly paid job in administration at the local college. On weekends, I welded.

On one of the shelves in Matt’s workshop, there are simple items, including a green dinosaur that he created at the very beginning and which his mother appreciated. All of these “works” belonged over the years to people who were important to Matt, to whom he gave them, and who, in the meantime, have passed away. After their death, these small sentimental creations took up space in the workshop and will not easily be removed. They have sentimental value. The artistic level doesn’t matter. For many years, Matt created as a hobby but without major success. No one was interested in what he did. Once, in the hallway of the college where he worked, he spoke about his art and career with a lecturer who worked there. They respected each other and spoke honestly. He was an honest and good guy, Matt assured me.

• I started complaining to him that I couldn’t break through with my art, that I wasn’t being invited to important exhibitions, that I couldn’t make a name for myself, that I wanted to be noticed as an artist, etc. etc. He then asked me if I was ready for the bitter truth that he wanted to present to me. I agreed, and he said:
• “Matt, you’re not an artist. You’re a skilled craftsman…”
• How much that hurt! It was a shock, and he continued: “If you don’t find a way to pour your soul into your work, to add magic to it, then you’re not an artist.”
• As a result of this conversation, as you can probably guess, I went through the entire process of processing what he had said: from sadness, to anger, regret, acceptance, and finally, I was ready for evolution. I didn’t know where to start, but eventually, I found an unexpected path. I started reading a lot of philosophy and set myself the task of creating a three-dimensional, tangible philosophy.
• “So you think that any good craftsman can become an artist?” I asked, and Matt started laughing.
• “Now that’s a good question, right? – There are tens of thousands of good welders in the world, but only a few become artists. An artist doesn’t copy reality, doesn’t recreate it literally. He focuses on interpreting it. That’s exactly what I do. I don’t create a mirror reflection of reality. I interpret it in three-dimensional sculptures. When I understood that, I moved to a completely different level. My art changed.”
• “How did you build your market? How do you now acquire clients?”
• I started with small exhibitions. Then my art started appearing in small galleries, and over time, in bigger ones. My sculptures were in nine galleries along the West Coast and were featured by many well-known interior designers. Some gallery owners cheated me, they didn’t pay for the delivered sculptures. Now, I don’t work with galleries anymore. Imagine someone like me trying to collect a debt from a gallery owner in California. Just getting there would have been a huge feat. I could only shrug. I hit a wall. They were taking advantage of me. I had to end that. Then, the kids taught me social media, and the interest in what I do increased. The internet helped with commercialization, and I stopped collaborating with all those fraudsters.
• “So now it’s mainly Facebook?”
• Not anymore. There was a time when I did up to twenty exhibitions a year on the West Coast. Now, I only do two a year. My name has become recognizable. People started showing up in my workshop. They drop by just to look around, to see if something catches their eye, and maybe buy something. Word of mouth started working. Now, recommendations are my most important source of income. People call me because someone showed them my art or they saw it somewhere. In 2006, I met a prominent architect with whom I still work today. He incorporates my art into his building designs. Those are interesting projects as well.
• “It’s a great fortune to make a living from what you love to do. As a person with a disability, you are financially independent. That’s admirable to many people.”
• Every piece of metal I use for my sculptures is waste that no one needs. Remember, all the doctors after my accident, and there were many experts, told me that I would leave the hospital and die within three years. I was supposed to be the world champion, the best cowboy on the planet, and suddenly, I couldn’t move, and all the wise heads said I was dying. I don’t know why it happened, or why I started doing what I do, what you see here, but the way I treat my material, from which sculptures are made, that I give them spirit, that I give them new meaning and purpose, that matters. To all those discarded things. It has a deep meaning for me. I think it’s also a very strong message that I can share with people. To give hope to many and a reason for reflection to others. My goal as an artist is not to create beautiful things but to discover the essence.
• “Where do you get your materials?”
• Once, near Salt Lake, there was a large scrapyard. They had a whole field of things I could use. I also asked farmers to bring me unwanted scrap metal that was lying around on their farms. Over time, the word got out, and I would wake up in the morning to find old washing machines and refrigerators in front of my house. It was madness. I had to stop that and tell people that they couldn’t bring me all their trash and appliances. Now, more refined items come to me… Look, there’s an old plow over there. Today, a guy is coming to pave my driveway, and in exchange for payment, he asked for that plow.
• “You Americans love surrounding yourselves with old everyday items. All those rusting or restored cars standing in front of houses, old signs, advertisements, gas pumps. Your art fits into this trend. You create extraordinary objects from rusting elements. I’m not surprised you found customers. Utah is mostly like the corroding ocean floor. Everywhere you go, you look at oxidizing rocks, corrosion, it’s everywhere here. An artist like you couldn’t come from anywhere else in the world…”

Matt started laughing –

“There’s something to that. I hadn’t looked at it that way.”

On the wall by the entrance to Matt’s workshop hang drawings of horses. Horses are one of the most recognizable elements of his art. He has also sculpted life-sized longhorn bulls and other animals, but horses have been his focus for years, and he continues to fulfill new commissions. When I pointed out the drawings, Matt said they were “scales” that help him maintain proportions. After all, for each animal he creates, he uses different parts. Different elements that are meant to bring about the same proportional effect. Matt builds three-dimensional objects in his mind, but like everyone else, when solving the most important problems… When constructing, he needs mathematics. In front of the workshop stood an unfinished life-sized horse sculpture, and the first thing that came to my mind was how in the world Matt is able to create something like that.

• A healthy person would have to climb a ladder to weld it—how do you do it, I asked?
• I built a frame and have a hoist, a crane, that lifts me to the required height along with my cart. I hang with this metal under the ceiling, and I can weld from above.
• Determination. There’s nothing impossible… If someone ever tells me something can’t be done, I’ll tell them I know a guy who welds life-sized horse sculptures while hanging with a wheelchair under the ceiling…
• Yes, it’s a challenge, but not everyone is convinced. Do you know why, in my opinion, I didn’t manage to make an international career? Because of how I look and that I don’t follow trends. Many people don’t want to look at a cripple. Once, a critic from New York came up to me and said that I’m not an acclaimed artist because I don’t have a specialization. My art is too personal—if I focused only on making horses or other characteristic figures, I would have achieved great success. But because I create different works, personal ones, and even architectural elements, it will never work for me. I thought about it, but you know, the “rich and famous” environment is not for me. As young people say, I don’t click in that scene. And on top of that, I’m a cripple. I even had cases at exhibitions, art fairs, where people came up to me and said I was a fraud. A cripple like me couldn’t possibly create such sculptures. They asked who was doing it for me. I always tell them that I move my body in a wheelchair just as smoothly as they move their own, so why couldn’t I do this?
• Because people in wheelchairs don’t do things like that, they answer me.

I said Yes, they do!. 

• You have the best example right in front of you. Look at my hands. Do you think I didn’t make these sculptures?
• No, you definitely didn’t patina them yourself, they insist.
• Yes, I’ve read all the books on blacksmithing techniques, I learned how to patina. I do it myself.
• You know, most of these people still don’t believe me and leave annoyed?
• It’s jealousy, envy, stupidity—the world is full of it.

Matt’s sculptures find their way into the homes and ranches of wealthy Americans across the country. I first encountered his art several years earlier at a friend’s ranch in Bandera, Texas, and included it in my book. It was a life-size Longhorn bull that adorned her estate. Matt also creates art for cities. A few of his sculptures can be seen in St. George—an hour’s drive northeast of Las Vegas. He was one of the initiators of the “Art Around the Corner” project, which the city decided to develop in the early years of the 21st century. Thanks to this, many beautiful sculptures can be seen in various locations around the city. Art is everywhere. It’s worth visiting while in Utah or Nevada. Some of Matt’s works include a dragon near the city museum and a horse in a local restaurant. Matt also sold his work abroad, and if it weren’t for his disability, he would have liked to travel to exhibitions in other parts of the world, but that’s currently unattainable for him. For about the past ten years, things have been getting worse. As Matt says, his body is completely falling apart. It’s an endless suffering of a disabled man who not only struggles with his disability but also continuously fights against death. It’s the weight he has been carrying on his shoulders for decades. After several hours of conversation, I finally dared to ask him: How does he cope with the suffering?

“In the modern world, everyone wants to go through suffering quickly, as smoothly as possible. Not giving themselves time to process it. Time to understand what this suffering is trying to teach us.” – Matt Clark

One of the most popular documentaries in the history of American PBS was the program “The Power of Myth,” which consisted of six conversations Bill Moyers (who served as the White House Press Secretary during President Johnson’s time) had with Joseph Campbell (a brilliant American writer who dedicated his life to studying human nature through the lens of mythology and customs from various cultures. He was also a personal friend of George Lucas and John Steinbeck). In one of the episodes, Moyers asked Campbell the following question:

• “What is the essence, the core of life?”
• To which Campbell replied without hesitation: “Suffering! The nature of life is suffering!”
• “What do you mean? People strive for happiness. Many claim to be happy and have a good life,” Moyers asked.
• “They know how to endure suffering well,” Campbell replied calmly.pbell

With my spinal injury, I have been practicing this my whole life. Look at how many people can’t even accept this fact. They mask their suffering, they reject it. Many choose addictions, they abuse alcohol, drugs, and many other things that give them a temporary sense of peace and happiness, but you can’t escape from suffering. Don’t mask suffering, don’t hide it somewhere where you think you can’t see it. You have to deal with it. You have to learn to live with it. You have to navigate through it! Remember, don’t hide it, navigate through suffering!

• So, if you allow yourself to experience suffering, accept it into your life, you become free.
• Yes! You have to decide for yourself what to do with your suffering. To navigate it, accept it, or keep asking yourself questions like: What’s wrong with me? What will people think? Why do I keep suffering? etc. I have a brother who has been addicted to medication and alcohol for twenty years. This is not the way. He’s in the hospital, sooner or later, he’ll die. He lost his round.
• Do you believe in the existence of God?
• Yes.
• I’ve been traveling through Utah for a few weeks, and it feels like for the first time in my life, I’ve noticed the planet I’m living on. Until now, I admired the views, marveled at nature, but I didn’t notice the planet. Here, most of the time, I’m traveling across the bottom of a dried-up ocean, looking at dinosaur skeletons in museums from tens of millions of years ago. I observe, looking at the rocks, how over hundreds of millions of years, when humans didn’t exist, this small part of the planet, Utah, was shaped. All living organisms contain bacteria, parasites, smaller organisms that live on and in them. In Utah, I started wondering if we aren’t microorganisms on the body that is the planet. Our existence is a short episode in its life. Like a cold that lasts a week. We don’t matter.
• In my opinion, self-awareness matters.
• But animals have that too. You can teach a chimpanzee to communicate in sign language.
• As I developed as an artist, I started to see the soul in inanimate objects. I know it sounds crazy…
• When you create, do you pass part of yourself to them, or do they have their own soul?
• They have their own, and I have mine, and we connect in the act of creation.
• Maybe, just like the planet, Mother Nature, the universe, God, whatever we call this process, created us. By giving part of itself and awakening our souls?
• When I create art, I can do whatever I want. I can imagine anything and impose my will on my objects to give them the shape and character I envision.
• Returning to suffering. If the essence of life is navigating suffering, then what about the feeling of happiness? There are times when we feel incredibly happy.
• That’s also a state of mind, which we must learn to navigate. Imagine that our well-being can be placed on a scale, where -10 is a state where you’d want to commit suicide, and +10 is a state of euphoric happiness. Normal is 0. We should strive for 0. Where 0 is, there is peace and balance. You have to keep taking care to reach 0.
• You created a series of sculptures dedicated to the dark aspects of our lives—suffering, depression, guilt. Why?
• Everyone pretends that these negative emotions don’t concern us, we’re ashamed of them, but they are a permanent part of life.

In front of Matt’s house stands a massive sculpture. Over 4.5 meters tall, the “cosmic singularity” embodies suffering. The main element of the sculpture is a torn, sea buoy that appears as though it has exploded from the inside. For many years, it served as a fuel tank until one day it had to explode. Its torn, shredded structure symbolizes the internal suffering we carry with us throughout life, while the solid base and the column pointing towards the cosmos represent the strong foundation that allows us to live. The cosmic character of the sculpture symbolizes immortality. What an allegory in front of the home of a man who, hurt by life, remained strong and reached for the stars.

Another sculpture Matt dedicated to the feeling of guilt is “The Guardian of the Key”—a figure wrapped in chains, with a body made of tiny gears and keys. The inspiration came from an old song by The Eagles, which includes the line: “It’s so often the case, that we live in chains, not realizing we have the key.” Matt linked this to the feeling of guilt. If we feel guilty, we live in chains. It prevents us from living normally. Of course, one can seek help from coaches, psychologists, or mentors, but we must remember that the true answer lies within us. The key to relief and the solution to the problem is inside us. This is also true with depression. Matt depicted it as twisted metal pieces that seem to levitate around a single vertical axis in the air. Depression is a state that, according to Matt, we all navigate through in our lives. He also believes it is stigmatized in modern society. It is misunderstood and poorly addressed. Depression is part of the rhythm of our soul, through which we pass from time to time. Depression halts our lives, drains us so that we reconsider parts of ourselves. It is a gift we receive. By navigating through depression, moving through that state, we purify ourselves. Matt is convinced that depression is simply a part of life, something we all go through from time to time. When you are depressed, you feel as if you are falling apart, the world is crushing you, and you don’t understand why or what is happening. Once you pass through that process, a scar remains, but you are changed, purified, and can move on. Matt believes that too many people immediately reach for medication, trying to silence and stop the process. Of course, there are people who need treatment and medication, but not everyone, and certainly not in such large numbers. In modern society, everyone wants to feel good quickly and avoid suffering, when we should be able to face our own dark corners of the soul.