Sam Burley is an illustrator who was formerly an matte painter; beyond that, his website offers little information.
His work shows his matt painting history, with beautifully realized landscapes and environments, but he also populates them with dynamic and wonderfully rendered creatures.
Fortunately, Burley provides good size images on his site, as his work shows to best advantage when you can appreciate his application of texture and the sweeping scale of many of his compositions.
He uses a controlled limited palette within each composition, using color contrasts for drama as well as compositional movement.
You can also find a gallery of his work on deviantART and another on Tor.com, which is where I encountered his work.
If you dig back a bit through his blog, you will find works in progress and posts about his working process.
