By Mona Mahadevan
Matt Herriot would rather you see his paintings than solve them.
Herriot, 26, a full-time painter and 2022 Yale College graduate, has been making abstract art out of a 700-square-foot Erector Square studio since June.
After attending graduate school in Chicago, he returned to the Elm City for its affordable studio space, “strong arts community,” and proximity to New York galleries. The London native currently lives in East Rock.
On Wednesday, Herriott opened his studio up to this reporter in advance of the upcoming Erector Square Open Studios 2025, an annual event that celebrates the city’s artists and artisans. He’s one of over 200 local artists who rent studio space at Erector Square, a sprawling, industrial complex at 315 Peck St.
Herriot’s work is designed around a viewer’s perception. He said he aims for the “act of seeing itself” to be “the subject of the work” he produces.
“If you recognize something in the painting, as soon as you recognize it, then this makes you believe that you’ve solved the painting,” he explained. “It closes that loop of experience,” collapsing what should be an “ongoing act” into a single moment. When a painting doesn’t resemble any real-life object, he explained, the viewer has to engage directly with the piece in front of her. As the viewer tries to make sense of the work, she’ll end up drawing on her intuition, emotions, and creativity, since there’s no easy-to-recognize story or subject.
That’s among the reasons Herriot’s art has grown increasingly abstract, moving from representations of real-life objects into stacks of colorful paint, brushed and stroked across sheets of metal.
These days, Herriot’s painting-making process involves three steps:
First, he applies an even coat of paint onto a thin sheet of aluminum. He’s comes to realize that color choice contributes to “optical space,” which he defined as the “illusion of depth and space” hidden in the flat surface of a painting. Now, he gravitates towards darker, cooler colors as the base tone, since they tend to “recede” and help warmer, brighter colors come forward.
Second, with a metal scraper, he removes some of that base layer to reveal the metal surface beneath, either in large chunks or delicate, fine lines. Since aluminum is a shiny, light gray, Herriot finds that it has a “capacity for luminosity” when revealed that is more compelling than regular linen canvas.
Finally, with a taping knife, he applies multiple, thick layers of paint, pushing it over the dried base layer and revealed metal sections. The taping knife puts “uneven” pressure on the painting, Herriot explained, which helps create a variety of textures and interactions in the painting. For example, paint on the metal tends to form sharp, thin lines, while other parts of the painting turn out more blended and blurred.
His process is designed to build the “tension between experiencing the painting as a physical, material object” and “the illusion of light and space that it creates.”
While some of his work only takes a few layers of paint, Herriot said that others require “more than 20.” As for deciding when he’s done, he said, “I paint until the painting resolves.”
This reporter’s favorite Herriot piece is a medium-sized painting of mostly pinks and purples. Thin, delicate stripes reveal bits of the sheet metal, which glow to an opaque white in the sun. Swirls of deep purple and burgundy anchor the lighter, more playful strokes of fuchsia. This reporter, as a decidedly non-expert of art, isn’t sure what feeling or idea the painting conveys; but even so, it certainly kept her attention.
Wednesday morning, Herriot turned his attention away from painting and towards the physical objects themselves. During his last two years of painting on metal, one of his larger pieces warped after its wooden backing absorbed moisture from the air. From that, he realized that he needed to waterproof his frames, so Wednesday morning, he applied a finishing lacquer on his completed pieces.
That’s one of the lessons he took from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he earned a Master’s of Fine Arts in 2025 and began experimenting with metal. Before then, he graduated in 2022 from Yale College with a degree in art and art history.
He was especially influenced by his classes with Rob Storr, the former dean of the Yale School of Art, who taught Herriot the formal elements of abstract painting. During that course, he also studied two abstract painters that remain among his favorites: Robert Ryman and Gerhard Richter.
He returned to New Haven when one of his friends, a fellow artist and Yale graduate, said he was looking to leave his Erector Square studio. He started renting the space in June.
His time there has been colored by the time pressure of his visa, which expires next year. Herriot, who’s from London, found that to be both “stressful” and “motivating,” since he isn’t sure how long he’ll be able to stay in his Erector Square studio.
Herriot’s career also comes with inherent instability. While he’s motivated to create pieces that he finds “successful” and “fulfilling” on his “own terms,” he said his career needs to be financially sustainable as well. His goal, he added, is to spend as much time as possible painting; for now, he’s selling enough to create full time.
These days, he’s focused on producing a new collection entitled “Unfamiliar Patterns.” The idea, he said, is for each painting to share a “common visual syntax” that anchors viewers while also creating a “degree of unpredictability.” The paintings in the collection so far primarily contain different purples and yellows, as well as similar patterns of scraping.
“I want the painting to surprise you,” he said, so the viewer never completely grasps “the logic behind the work.”
