In the Studio with Mason Saltarrelli

It’s a quiet Sunday when we make the trip to Dumbo to meet the artist Mason Saltarrelli, who keeps a studio in a walk-up building with a view that stretches out to Manhattan. Born in New Orleans and now a mainstay of the New York art world, Saltarrelli paints moving abstracts in bold colours, a process honed over many years, gallery shows, and artistic evolutions. “Painting is a portal where time unfolds along an enigmatic path,” he says, enigmatically. 

Ruminating on his life, work, and inspirations, we sat with Saltarrelli to find out more. 

“People ask how I know a painting is finished, but to me an abstract painting is never finished. Art is reciprocal. It is an experience which reopens each time someone visits.”

What were your early memories of wanting to be an artist? What first inspired you? 

My inspiration has been a subtle culmination of experiences through time and cities. Photography was my bridge to painting. Taking pictures of jazz musicians at the Palm Court and other venues in New Orleans throughout my teens inspired me to capture emotion with a lens that aimed to push the musician’s sound and sentiment through the silence of a still image.

I moved to New York in 1997. What I learned from my traditional jazz world experiences led me to embrace the buzz of Manhattan through street photography. Traveling around the city on foot was free flowing and felt as if a Thelonious Monk album was playing in my head. 

Can you talk about the role that New Orleans had in shaping you as both a person and an artist?

I have been fortunate to travel to many places. New Orleans remains important and unparalleled for me even as it is so familiar. I spent a lot of time in my high school years in the French Quarter absorbing its otherworldliness. One evening I went to Preservation Hall to see the brothers Willie and Percy Humphrey play. Arriving early, I met the artist Noel Rockmore. He was sitting alone in the front room where the band performs. The walls were covered with his paintings of jazz players. That moment felt like a rare glimpse into the history of jazz and stays with me. Even though I was a kid, Peter "Chuck" Badie, Lionel Ferbos, Pud Brown and so many other great jazz musicians who played at the Palm Court welcomed me as a regular.

During breaks from playing bass on stage, Peter loved to recount stories of his childhood and family in New Orleans. I was happy to listen. He drove a huge Cadillac, always wore his sunglasses and was jazz through and through. The extraordinary energy of the city merged with the singular energy of the jazz players and French Quarter characters certainly seeped in and imparted their ways of seeing differently.

What led you to New York?

My friendship with the trumpet player and singer Doc Cheatham. As a kid in the 90s I travelled with Doc’s manager, Andrea DuPlessis, to see him play some Sunday afternoon shows at Sweet Basil in Greenwich Village. One evening the three of us went to the original Umberto’s in Little Italy for dinner because Doc was in the mood for clams.

Afterwards we sat for a while at a table outside of a Mulberry Street bakery eating cannolis as Doc told us wonderful stories of travelling the world with jazz bands. He had us laughing to tears. When it was time to head back uptown for the night, one of the few remaining Checker cabs happened to pull up and took us up 8th Avenue to the Milford Plaza Hotel. Doc then continued home to Harlem with his legs stretched out in that lovely cab. All these years later that evening is still a special memory.

Who have been the greatest inspirations during your life as an artist?

My grandmother was a seamstress. During our summers together I would join her while she shopped for materials and then return to her house listening to the hum of her sewing machine and seeing women arrive for their fittings of elaborate wedding dresses. Before I was born she created ball gowns for Mardi Gras queens. In imagining those gowns a feeling of concrete elusiveness harmonises with my interpretation of abstraction. Thinking about her garden and how she sewed is connective, especially when I am stretching canvas.

“Labour is a good antidote to the over-journeying of a painting mind.”

What sort of phase do you feel that you’re in as an artist? Have there been any shifts over the last year or two?

Distillation and exploration are the current directions in my studio. In 2024 while I was in Kyoto I visited the home studio of the ceramicist Kawai Kanjiro and often reread the book I bought there We Do Not Work Alone: The Thoughts of Kanjiro Kawai by Yoshiko Uchida. Seeing first-hand his and other work from the Mingei movement was wonderful. Reading the book cracks a door into his world and philosophy. It reminds me of when people ask how I know a painting is finished. To me an abstract painting is never finished. Art is reciprocal. It is an experience which reopens each time someone visits. Every observer who feels continues the story through their own lens of being. 

Do you follow a painting routine? How do you structure your typical working day?

I stretch and prime my canvases, so I work in phases. Labour is a good antidote to the over-journeying of a painting mind. Paintings can resolve quickly or take years to finalise. As silence in between sound creates song, breaks from painting help me to see how each piece will speak for itself. The right time to stop working on a piece is a fine line. It's easy to miss and occasionally creates beautiful conundrums.

Sometimes the magic lies in blowing past the line into a mess, and then if I’m lucky, resolving how I lost the painting is what brings it to the place I could have never imagined. Other times it is important to honour the line, allowing simplicity to sing. I have found by giving the stage to intuition, routine and structure generate themselves.

Do you feel like your clothes are important to how you perceive and portray yourself?

My style is sentimentally organic and ritually considerate. The history of my clothes determines a lot about how often and where I wear them. I had a light blue barn jacket tailored at Sarto Ginza in Tokyo last year. Wearing the jacket brings me back to a wonderful month traveling around Japan. Our clothing carries our history of experience. Because of that, certain comforts may be given to ourselves or considerations made by knowing the clothing's interior importance.  

“Experience and gratitude are eternal mentors whose lessons bloom every day.”

Have you ever had a mentor? If so, what’s the greatest lesson they taught you?

Experience and gratitude are eternal mentors whose lessons bloom every day. Doc Cheatham imparted great wisdom in simple ways. My favourite lesson from him was his smile. Lately I have been thinking back to conversations with my father about how enjoying working in the studio is essential. It has taken a while, but I realised in that lesson the studio is a metaphor for all space. My mom has been a great teacher as well.

How do you handle creative block as an artist? Is it difficult to stay on the path, so to speak?

I watch the levels of confusion or frustration that come up and occasionally stop if they feel too negative. Sometimes the marks in a painting are revisited over years and it’s the block that opens the painting. A new aspect of yourself may appear if you are willing to be lost. I see the impediment as the magic that knows “this one is for a different day”. A future day means some other experience will merge into a particular painting. That is important because paintings hold stories. 

Often before a big trip I will gather unresolved canvases and address them first upon my return. When that approach works, something in the clarity of my reset and inspiration from travel supplies what was missing. The block exists on the path so that everything does not become a blur.

What is your favourite ever work of art and why?

‘Au Fond du Temple Saint’, the duet in Georges Bizet’s opera The Pearl Fishers.
 
How would you describe your current output? Have you been following any specific themes or inspirations?

I am currently working on three solo projects. One is with Turn Gallery in New York, another is with Los Angeles based Timothy Hawkinson Gallery and the third is curated by my photography professor Joseph Lawton at Fordham University at Lincoln Center. Each presentation has its own space, intention and spirit. In February I returned to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, which I had missed for many years. Twice this year I visited Tucson, Arizona. Through the familiar and unfamiliar, both of these experiences are offering their voices and they have a lot to say.