Education empowers Simon Youth Foundation student to paint new picture of his future

Matthew Linville in front of one of his school murals

Walk through the Simon Youth Academy at Westminster Mall, and you’re likely to run into Matthew Linville with paint brush in hand.

Linville, a student at the non-traditional high school for at-risk students that is supported by Simon Youth Foundation and the Huntington Beach Union High School District, has spent recent semesters decorating the school’s walls with hand-painted murals.

The largest of his creations decorates a long hallway and features a forest scene, which is fitting imagery for Linville’s personal story. He has had to persevere through the wilderness that life can be when a young man’s parents are not present in his life.

“My mother has been in and out of my life,” Linville says. “I have never met my father, and I am trying to confront those demons and move beyond my troubled past.”

Linville, who now lives with a grandmother, says his work on the school murals is a part of his process. They are an expression of his belief that any circumstance can be changed, improved, or made more beautiful.

One of Linville's murals

“I believe that as a person I need to keep moving and keep striving for change to move away from where I have been before, and the murals are like this feeling of change when you can start from scratch and make the wall what you want it to be,” Linville says.

“Matthew brought the idea of the murals to me, and I believed that it was great opportunity for him to express himself,” says Dennis Herzog, the administrator at the Academy. “He is often here after class time to work on the murals, which have brightened our learning space.”

The murals also have brought the school’s students closers together. What started as a one-man job quickly became a group project with as many as 15 classmates designing and painting the murals under Linville’s guiding eye.

“These are not just my walls, and I wanted to get feedback on the work. I would offer them a chance to paint, and many picked up a brush,” Linville says.

Herzog says leadership and inclusiveness are a part of Linville’s strong character, a character that has helped the 17-year-old student earn the credits needed to achieve senior status a semester early. He’ll graduate from the Academy in January, 2012.

“Matthew was so well thought of at REI (the outdoor gear and camping store where he worked as an intern in 2010) that he was offered a full time job over the summer, and he has continued working part time at the store during this school year,” Herzog says.

Another of Linville's murals

Herzog adds that the staff at REI all pitched in money to help Linville purchase a bike on his most recent birthday, because his coworkers thought so highly of him.

“I sometimes hate being inside, being trapped by walls, but the bike has given me freedom – it takes me anywhere I need to go,” Linville says.

Linville will next ready his bike and for a trip to college. He’ll be attending Golden West Community College after he wraps up his high school diploma. It’s an achievement that conjures visions of a mural where the edge of a deep, dark forest opens into a lush, green, sun-drenched river valley.

“Education should be used when it is given,” Linville says. “I have a very emotionally tall wall to get over in my life, but education will help me better myself so that I can move on from my past.”