Sober Queer Neurodivergent multi-hyphenate Artist Matty Heimgartner was born and raised in San Jose, California. That is also where they found their artistic voice, both in academia and through the art community. While music was Matty’s first passion, it was not until Matty was thirty-two that they released their first single, “I Can’t Believe I’m Leaving You.” That single was a part of Matty’s debut album Matty, along with “Addicted,” “Soft,” “The Way I Loved Him,” and “There’s Someone at the Front Door,” . The album came just a few months after the release of Matty’s debut book, Self-portraits: A Collection of Memoir Essays. Both of these passion projects came after years of making a name for themself as a surreal painter.
Matty developed an obsession with pop stars and Hollywood fame at a young age. Matty spent their childhood dreaming of becoming a pop star while recording music with their eldest brother and their youngest sister. Immediately following high school, Matty enrolled in music classes. Shaken by performance anxiety, Matty dropped all music classes but soon returned to college by way of the theater program as an attempt to conquer stage fright. Heimgartner landed small roles in Tenneessee Williams’ play “Night of the Iguana,” and Guiseppe Verdi’s opera “Il Trovatore.”
Addiction and a lack of self-esteem steered Matty off the stage again and they shifted their attention to writing. Heimgartner had several short stories published in literary journals throughout their early twenties as they studied English. In 2016, Heimgartner earned their first art gallery showing in a collaborative piece with a local artist. The next few years were dedicated to painting as Heimgartner struggled with alcohol dependency and drug addiction.
Heimgartner found sobriety in 2019 and returned to graduate school in 2020. Several of Matty’s personal essays were published internationally over the next few years. In 2023, Matty earned their film acting debut in Loïc Pichot’s short film, “Distressed.”
Be sure to follow Matty Heimgartner on YouTube and Substack.
Click below to dive further into the separate art forms.
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Musician
The debut album, Matty, featuring the singles, “Addicted,” “Soft,” and “There’s Someone at the Front Door,” is now streaming everywhere.
Music →
Painter
Don’t Panic is a series of acrylic paintings on canvases that utilize elements of surrealism and cubism to tell stories of living with mental illness.
Writer
Self-portraits, the debut collection of memoir essays featuring, “Mom Dress,” “Bob’s Bar,” “After,” and many more, is available now.
Matty Heimgartner 