Philippe Mastrocola is an independent artist born in Montréal in 1986. Since his early childhood, he’s always been passionate about arts but it took him quite a while to truly consider this path as a tangible career. Nowadays, Philippe identifies as a visual artist with an abstractionism approach. His artistic identity defined itself after various experimentations with quite a few different practices from his teenage years to now.
Around the age of seventeen years old, when he was into sports and gazing at artworks. Matthew, a friend (for over 20 years) of Philippe, helped him notice how much graffiti was visible on Montreal walls. This moment marks Philippe’s infatuation for this type of expression. Little by little, he learnt how to use the spray paint, to sketch and draw letters as well as color combinations. Graffiti became the center of his artistic drive and Philippe got submerged by it. At some point, whilst evolving through the streets and finding his spots, Philippe found a friend, Waster12, a graffiti artist way more experienced than him. Alongside him, Philippe Mastrocola took the time to integrate all the teaching, mastered his techniques of lettering and choosing the colors wisely. At this point in his life, Waster12 was an inspiration, a mentor and a friend. Unfortunately, in 2006, Waster12 died and left an empty space in Philippe’s life, as well as interrogations regarding the choices needed to be made about his artistic life. While his desire to paint graffiti is less and less potent, Philippe develops his desire to create more art in a different way.
Even though Philippe was driven by the unknown of the graffiti lifestyle, he soon discovered he needed more as an artist, more than what he was used to: tracing its letters, leaving its mark on the shared spaces of Montreal wallscape. Being thirsty for knowledge, Philippe took the time year after year to educate himself on the state of the arts and on the different possibilities offered to him as an artist. A year after the passing of his friend, Philippe pursued his studies at Concordia University, first in Art Education. This decision helped him refresh his perspective on creating art as well as his scope and style continued to evolve as he developed a stronger passion for art and experimented with different materials and media.
In hindsight, Philippe expresses gratitude for this time in his life, negotiating desires of going further than graffiti while still embracing this part of his life. When he was a student at Concordia University, Philippe Mastrocola discovered a way to reuse spray paint cans as cameras for pinhole photography. More specifically, the students were assigned a project to make a pinhole camera out of any object. Since he had many empty spray cans, Philippe figured it would be interesting to make cameras out of these objects. This practice installs itself as central in the transition between graffiti and abstract painting. Indeed, photographing walls and different environments in the city allowed Philippe to slow down in own process of creation. Documenting ephemeral art permitted him to extend the lifespan of temporary artworks and give them another life. Taking the time to take the photographs, to let the time for exposure happen and create the composition permitted him to open up his gaze and take in all the shades. In other words, pinhole photography, as a step in developing new skills and a new approach in his art.
During the summers of 2011 and 2012, Philippe focused on photography and spent his days and nights in a darkroom built in a friend’s basement. With the help of Matthew and other friends, Philippe used this painting studio to create new canvases and experiment his innovative artistic missions. These moments are important to understand his nowadays practice because they crystallized in a way his appetite for exploration, his taste for pursuing experiences and his love for the process of creation in itself.
It’s around this time that Philippe Mastrocola made the final decision to focus on his career as an abstract painter. In 2012, he realized his first exposed mural on Duluth street, a piece that got press coverage and encouraged him to continue on this path. With this mural, a momentum is created, encouraging him to continue on this path. Since then, he’s been painting walls and canvases, alternating mediums and techniques in order to keep his work in a forward motion.
In his artistic life, Philippe had the chance to experiment his craft in multiple places, from Montreal, to New-York City, Miami, Chicago, Detroit and Mexico. Through meeting members of the graffiti community, he evolved personally and artistically. By painting in different environments and collaborating with interested clients for commission works, Philippe Mastrocola takes every opportunity to take his painting where it needs to go, never stopping to learn and bring his artistry to the next level.
For his future endeavors, Philippe Mastrocola wishes to work more with the corporality of natural elements as leaves and flowers, intricating his practice of photography with using the human body as a canvas for creating a communication between the vegetal and the human nature. This part of his works highlights his relationship with the patterns existing in the natural worlds, still anchored in his research of understanding movement and colors within the earthly realms. Moreover, in continuation with his color explorations, Philippe considers creating his own pigments. As part of this process, he goes out and harvest his colors from out in nature. This desire comes from the pleasure he takes when giving new significations to the tones and their symbolism. This step in his work would allow him to control more the nuances and expand his practice towards a closer relationship to his medium. Indeed, pigments extracted from the natural world are part of the environment Philippe is trying to grasp through his artworks, in all its depths and diversity. Amongst his inspirations, we can find the inspiring Andy Goldsworthy who works with natural materials and transforms them into patterns, giving them another life and another meaning.