ARTIST STATEMENT
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“Responding to my environment as an expressive colourist, I use nature as my inspiration. It is somewhat like writing a poem on the page using pigment and brushes as the vehicle to capture my sense of place."
VISUAL ARTIST
Rebecca Mason
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BIOGRAPHY:
Becky Mason from Chelsea Quebec, Canada, studied at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto where she first developed her unique painting style first in watercolour and now she works in acrylic. Mason takes inspiration from her natural surroundings with water, trees, canoes and mountains as the central themes. She is passionate about canoeing and the environment and she explores these subjects through her painting, writing, environmental activism, and as well as her speaking projects. She has contributed to many publications including, the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society book, Rendezvous with the Wild, The Boreal Forest of which two of her paintings are profiled. Her work can be found in private collections in Canada, the U.S.A. and Europe.
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LIST OF EXHIBITIONS:
Rebecca has exhibited her work in Ontario and Quebec since 1988. She has participated in a wide array of exhibitions at galleries, juried exhibitions and art events. Some of the group and solo exhibition spaces she has shown at are; The Cube Gallery, Galerie McKenzie Marcotte, Casino de Hull, Galerie Old Chelsea, Ottawa City Hall, Maison du Citoyen à Hull, Ottawa Art Gallery Rentals and Sales, Museum of Nature, Joineryco Gallery, McDonald-Cartier International Airport, Santé Restaurant-Gallery, Conseil régional de l’environnement, Ottawa Civic Centre, and the Chateau Laurier.
PARALLEL LIVES
Excerpt by Phil Jenkins.
“...Becky Mason’s hands are very adept at holding a brush or paddle; when the paddle is in her grip these days, more often than not she is teaching. It’s her summer job, passing on to many local canoeists and outlying paddlers in a wide radius the considerable skills her father Bill taught her. Bill Mason was a famous canoeist and a painter, and an undeniable influence on his daughter in that he helped her to look at nature with a clear, loving eye.
When the brush strokes replace the paddle strokes, Becky produces, on creased Japanese rice paper, delicate, light-filled watercolours that reflect what her inner eye has seen of natural beauty..... In her studio room within the house, Becky thinks gives deep thought to her next series--it might be mountains, ice storms or canoes or waves on a shore, currently it’s trees--and then executes them rapidly, almost as though she is on auto-memory. Reid in his joyous confinement is steadily outputting portraits of characters from a narrative that we must divine by looking good and hard into his flesh-tones and grey-blues and then as hard into ourselves. There is an answer there somewhere; the trick is putting your hands on it. There are no people in Becky’s works; there are always people in Reid’s.
Now, for the first time in all their very productive years together, they are having a joint show, an event in their joint lives that produces a smile whenever they mention it. Their home is actually a joint gallery, of course. I couldn’t help but envy them the ability to decorate your home with wonderful art with your name on it....."
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The Low down To Hull and Back, July 29, 2009