We were lucky to catch up with Danielle Mastrion recently and have shared our conversation below.
Danielle, appreciate you joining us today. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
I have been able to make a full-time living from my creative work for the last 7 years. I started my own company, Danielle Mastrion Art LLC about two years ago just to make everything 100% official. I always tell younger people starting in this industry that I didnt come out of college and poof! I began painting murals. It was a very slow, 10 year progression into this career. I graduated college, Parsons School of Design, in 2004, and I didnt paint my first mural until 2012, and didnt go full time until about 2018. I studied Illustration in college, which was a mix of fine art painting and graphic design. When I graduated, I worked at about every single ‘creative’ job you can imagine. I worked as a Gallery Assistant, an Artists’ Studio Assistant, I worked retail, I interned in some very cool streetwear brands, and eventually worked as a graphic designer for some very prominent streetwear brands; I worked as a jewelry maker, and my longest ‘real’ job was working as an assistant graphic designer for a boutique advertising agency on Madison Avenue. I was working these jobs during the day, and at night, I was live painting all around NYC. There was a good 10 year time period where almost every event had a live painting component. a DJ night at a club? Live painting there. A concert? A freestyle session? Live painting. There was a very well known weekly live painting event called The Collage Art Movement, which I was invited to paint at, and it started in Soho on West Broadway, and processed to The DL and The Delancey. It was at these that I met so many friends, and was invited to paint with Art Battles. Art Battles took me around the world. I won a few key battles in New York, which sent me to Poland, and then sent me to the finals in Paris. It was here that I met painters from other countries, who also painted murals. They also painted full time. My mind was blown being exposed to European Street Art and Murals. Coming from New York, I grew up with Graffiti – which is it’s own genre, culture, art form, lifestyle. In Europe, I saw people creating these huge fine art-style paintings, the kind I did with oil paints here, but with spray paint. They had crews there that made huge production walls – and in that crew there were the graffiti artists, the realistic artists, the ones who did the background or crazy abstract patterns, ones who focused only on lettering, or characters – and these crews would create these pieces that combined all these different styles ON WALLS ! I came back home and painted in my first mural project – the Centrifuge Public Art Project in the Lower East Side. Shortly after, I was invited to paint at the legendary 5POINTZ in Queens – where I saw artists doing the same caliber work as I saw in Europe (Productions, realism, straight graff work, etc) and knew I needed to paint my piece in aerosol. So 5POINTZ was my first aerosol piece. When I start painting murals, I supported myself by working as a tour guide! I loved my city, loved working outside, and walking around let me scope out wall spaces, see what people were doing on the streets on a constant basis. The year I became a tour guide is also the year I began painting murals. That job gave me the flexibility to also paint, make my own schedule. Eventually, the mural offers started out weighing the tour schedule, and slowly I started doing more murals than tours, until I was able to fully let my ‘day job’ go. But it was very very gradual. And what I realize now is, me ‘managing’ my mural career isnt just painting. Painting is the easy part. I have to give proposals and renderings – that’s my graphic design background & advertising background. I have to pitch my work to a lot of marketing companies – I was on the other side of that when I worked in Advertising. I know how to wrap my paintings safely for delivery, I know how to organize my studio space – that comes from years working in art galleries and as a studio assistant. I designed my own website – that also comes from all those years working all those different jobs. The skills I learned in those 10 years post – college from all these different kinds of jobs now allow me to run my own company, my own studio, my own freelance career. I was always building towards this, even if at the time I didnt know I was.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Danielle Mastrion and I am a mural painter / street artist / public artist / painter / teacher from Brooklyn, New York. I grew up in the Sheepshead Bay / Marine Park/ Coney Island section of Brooklyn. I’ve been painting my entire life, and went to school to pursue painting at Edward R Murrow High School in Brooklyn & Parsons School of Design in Manhattan. I’ve been painting murals since 2012, been live painting around NYC since 2005, and have run my own mural painting company Danielle Mastrion Art LLC for the last few years. I also work as a teaching artist for a few school-based mural programs in NYC, and have been a Cultural Ambassador in Aerosol Art for the US State Department via their Next Level USA international & national program several times over. My mural art has taken me around the world – I have painted in mural festivals and mural projects in many different countries; here in NYC I have painted in many of the local mural festivals, and love partnering with local community organizations & neighborhood B.I.Ds to beautify communities. Commercially, I have worked with many big clients on activations, product launches, campaigns. Myself and my artwork was featured in a Nike Air Max 90 campaign; I have worked with Netflix, the Brooklyn Brewery, the NYC Governers office, and have done many projects with Spike Lee over the years. I’ve painted murals for these campaigns, I’ve live painted at activations and events, and have. created products for them as well. I’ve worked with the New York Rangers many times, Barclays Center, Madison Square Garden, the Coney Island Amphitheater & Live Nation, and created a beautiful mural inside of MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.
The work I am most proud of is the work I’ve done in my part of Brooklyn, my mother’s home neighborhood – Coney Island. I get to walk around the neighborhood and know I’ve partnered with and helped many of the local businesses there, the schools there, the neighborhood associations, etc. I’ve painted in the amusement district, on the boardwalk, for the local businesses, for the local brewery, the aquarium, a local high school, you name it. I love painting in Coney Island, and am so proud to be able to give back to the neighborhood that raised me and shaped me.
As a mural painter, I love telling the stories of the places I am painting. I call myself a portrait painter because I do love painting people, but a ‘portrait’ can be anything. A ‘portrait’ of a neighborhood can be the buildings, landmarks, a water tower, a quote, a phrase, a park, plants, nature – these are the things that tell the story of a place. No matter what neighborhood I am painting in, I want to make sure I do the residents justice, that when I walk away and the mural is done, they are left with something they can be proud of. I really try to get to know the place I’m representing – and this also runs through my work with clients. I really try to get to the core of the brand, the product, the message, and make sure what I’m doing is authentic to myself and to whomever my client is. My client can be a brand; my ‘client’ can be a neighborhood. I treat it all the same.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
Something I believe non-creatives struggle to understand is that this isn’t something we can just switch off. I always say I work a 100+ hour week so I don’t have to work a 40 hour week. It’s been a really hard struggle balancing ‘work’ life and home life (home meaning friends, family, loved ones etc) because you never actually stop being an artist. If I have to finish a painting, or get a project or deadline in, and I’ve had three days of nothing working, nothing coming out of me, not being able to ‘get it right’ – I may not be able to keep the plan that we’ve made. I may have one good day and a few bad days. Or, I may be on a roll, and running through proposals, getting paintings done, painting fast, and not want to stop because if I stop, I may not get that flow back. But in all fairness, as a creative, periods of doing nothing is also okay, and it’s also needed. I realize the older I get, I need to re-charge way, way more than I used to think I did, which resulted in burn-out. I always felt like I needed to be productive, even on my ‘days off’ (ha, what are those?) and I was burning out. Time off is okay. Doing nothing is okay. Resting is okay. Making that time for your friends and family and YOURSELF is okay. Creatives need just as much time off and recharging and resetting so we can absorb and produce as we need time on. You can’t get power off a drained battery.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
One, socialized healthcare, socialized education, cheap schooling, family support, affordable if not free childcare. If our basic human needs are met, we can focus on creating and doing what we do best. I think these things go without saying. So many of my beautifully gifted friends struggle to create and do what they do because they don’t have the support in these other departments. That’s first off. Second, I really believe cities, countries that provide spaces for free or cheap really see how artists prosper. We don’t have many ‘free walls’ here, if any. 5Pointz is gone (rest in paint) – where else in NYC can you go to just paint? To get out whatever you need to get out, work on your craft, practice – especially with aerosol? You cant do that inside without crazy ventilation and protective wear. What if you just want to…paint? Practice? Try something out? That shouldn’t be illegal, and here it is. In other. countries they have tons of places where you can go and just paint and not be arrested or criminalized for it. You should see the kind of work that comes out of these places because you can actually practice. Affordable studio spaces, or even free studio spaces you can apply for. Artists’ need space & time to do what they do. A place like Philly, for example, has an INCREDIBLE mural arts program run by the city. There’s incredible murals EVERYWHERE in Philly. The city recognizes the importance of public art, of murals, and supports it. Here in NYC, we don’t really have that. There’s tons of mural festivals, graff festivals, neighborhood things that try their best, but they don’t have CITY money behind them. I just wish art – of any kind, but particularly public art, mural art, aerosol art, was recognized as important, and a legit art form, and maybe we’d get supported a little more and can thrive doing what we do best instead of always struggling to find a spot, find a wall, find money for supplies, money for ladders, etc. It’s hard out here lol.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.daniellemastrion.com
- Instagram: @DanielleBKNYC
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellemastrion/
- Twitter: @DanielleBKNYC (havent been on in years)
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@daniellemastrion9373
- Other: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danielle_Mastrion
Image Credits
All photos my me (Danielle Mastrion)