Matthew Rolston

Matthew Russell Rolston is an American artist and photographer known for his portraiture. Born in Los Angeles, Rolston studied drawing and painting there, at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis College of Art & Design, as well as at the San Francisco Art Institute. He also studied illustration, photography and film at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, where in 2006 he received an honorary doctorate and in 2025 the College’s Lifetime Achievement Award, a distinction shared with notable photographers Hiroshi Sugimoto and Lee Friedlander, and multidisciplinary artists Doug Aitken and Diana Thater. In 1998, Rolston endowed the "Matthew Rolston Scholarship for Film and Creative Direction” at ArtCenter, and in 2024 he created the "Matthew Rolston Scholarship Fund for Product and Fashion Design” at Otis. While still at ArtCenter, Rolston was "discovered" by American artist Andy Warhol who immediately commissioned portraits for Interview magazine. Rolston’s photographs have appeared prominently in publications such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair and on over 100 Rolling Stone covers. Rolston’s works are in the permanent collections of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, and the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian, Washington D.C., among others.