Born in 1905, Matene graduated from Massachusetts Normal Art School, Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, and the Child Walker School of Fine Arts in Boston. She painted with Charles Hopkinson as a post-graduate research fellow at Harvard University's Fogg Museum for several years and later studied with Hans Hoffman in New York City. Matene received a many scholarships, teaching assistantships, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Fellowship unusual for women in 1932. She lived in New York City as a seminal member of the art scene in the late 1930’s but left New York in 1941 to settle in Kingston, RI where she became a Professor of Art at the University of Rhode Island.
Matene’s early figurative work was greatly admired by fellow artists. She organized diverse, often complex elements as geometrically structured forms in keenly seen, coherently lit, crisply rendered, often brightly colored watercolors and oils representing landscapes, cities, towns, buildings, still-lifes, figures, and individuals. During the one-person show artist John Graham gave Matene at his Primitive Arts Gallery, he told her to never change, that is, never move into the increasingly voguish abstraction of 1930’s.
Nonetheless, as anticipated in her drawing studies, over the years her work developed systematically from naturalism into abstraction. Passing through many transitional stages, this evolution culminated in the early 1970's with a series of brilliantly colored 9’ x 9’ geometric reliefs inspired by quilts and mandalas. She realized these works with acrylic paint on canvas wrapped around hand-cut shapes of .25” illustration board laminated to Masonite on massive stretchers. Her 1973 show of these huge abstract relief paintings at the University of Rhode Island Art Center Gallery drew a rave review from Providence Journal art critic Brad Swan. After being exhibited at OK Harris gallery, New York City, Matene’s large geometric paintings were consigned by the James Yu Gallery.
Matene was employed by the PWA to make paintings for the United States Government from 1932-1934. Matene exhibited paintings at the Boston Art Club, Chicago Art Institute, John Graham's Primitive Arts Gallery (NYC), the Rhode Island School of Art Museum, San Francisco World's Fair, the American Artist's Congress (NYC), South County Art Association (Kingston R.I.), The Choate School (Wallingford, CT), Albee Theatre (Providence, RI), the Spectrum Gallery (Wakefield, RI), The Newport Art Association (RI), Contemporary Artists Gallery (Providence), Providence Art Club, Radcliffe College (Cambridge, MA), the University of Rhode Island's Art Center (Kingston), the OK Harris Gallery (NYC) and James Yu Gallery (NYC). Her work was reviewed and reproduced in numerous publications including the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, Boston Post, Art News, and The Providence Journal. Her works are included in many distinguished collections including the collection of the leading American Folk Art dealer, David Wheatcroft who has acquired 18 of her paintings.
In her mid 90’s, shortly before her death at 95 in 2000, Matene created a series of nine powerful still-life paintings.