ABOUT
Matt Herriot [b.1999] is a British painter. He received a BA in Art and History of Art from Yale University in 2022, and will complete his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2025. His paintings investigate abstraction.
The content of my paintings is a process of seeing and feeling; a slow, contemplative experience, comparable to the simple pleasures of taking in a landscape, but defined by particularities of paint, dynamic flows of overlapping brushwork, and quiet resonances of color—such as a warm yellow beside a cool gray, a soft pink infused with streaks of lilac, or a bright orange nested in a layering of deep greens. Free and improvisational, the act of making is itself a mode of thinking: every additional gesture or adjusted hue is intuitively determined in response to the previous until the picture, entirely novel and unanticipated, is deemed complete. My work thereby continues an artistic tradition practiced by Gerhard Richter and Richard Diebenkorn, in which the painting process itself generates inexhaustible possibilities from a finite range of material choices. The result is a group of paintings which all share a common thread and each express total variety, particular in their precise manifestations of color, light, and structure. The delicate fracturing of each brushstroke over an anodized aluminum surface further complicates optical space with undulating tones and serendipitous details. Such intricate configurations of paint and color reward the slow, attentive eye with a sustaining energy while embodying an ease of mind and lightness of spirit: the pleasure found in painting by both maker and viewer.
Matt Herriot, 2024
EXHIBITIONS
Solo Exhibitions
2022 - Painting As Seeing, Aisling Gallery, The Study at Yale, New Haven, CT, USA
2022 - In The Shade, Aisling Gallery, The Study at Yale, New Haven, CT, USA
2021 - Strata, Aisling Gallery, The Study at Yale, New Haven, CT, USA
2021 - Grounded, Aisling Gallery, The Study at Yale, New Haven, CT, USA
2019 - Chroma, Aisling Gallery, The Study at Yale, New Haven, CT, USA
2019 - Hue, Yale University, Branford College HoC House, New Haven, CT, USA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2024 - Newly Available, 72 Warren St, New York, NY, USA
2023 - Pictures (of Nothing), School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
2022 - Two-Person Teaching Exhibition with Henri Matisse, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
2022 - Senior Thesis Show, Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT, USA
2021 - Senior Thesis Midway Show, Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT, USA
2019 - The Yale Layer Edition X Exhibition, Jonathan Edwards Gallery, New Haven, CT, USA
2019 - Nostalgia, Art Exhibition Society at Yale, Sterling Memorial Library, New Haven, CT, USA
2018 - Maddox Gallery Summer Contemporary, Maddox Gallery, Mayfair, London, UK
2018 - The Alzheimer's Show, Olympia London, Hammersmith, London, UK
2018 - Universal Language 2, A&D Gallery, Marylebone, London, UK
2018 - Parallax Art Fair, Kensington Town Hall, Kensington, London, UK
2017 - The National Open Art Exhibition, Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, London, UK
2017 - The National Open Art Exhibition (Finalists), Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, UK
2016 - The South West Academy Open Exhibition, Exeter Castle, Exeter, UK
EDUCATION
2025 - MFA (anticipated), School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
2022 - BA, Art and History of Art, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
awards
2017 - Young Artist 1st Prize - The National Open Art Competition
2017 - 4th Place - NOA17 World Art Vote
2017 - 2nd Prize, Portraits Category - The Artist's Magazine
PRESs
2023 - "Oases of Pure Feeling: For Abstract Art," Curatorial Affairs
2021 - "How remote learning is affecting art students," i-D Vice
2019 - Aesthetica Magazine, Issue 87, Feb / Mar 2019
2019 - The Yale Layer, Editions X, IX, VIII, VII
2018 - The Yale Layer, Edition VI
2017 - News Shopper Article
2017 - The Artist's Magazine, December
Permanent collections
Yale University