Comprised of artwork made in his classes at the University of Washington where he taught for 30 years, the student selections includes work in a variety of media that was kept to be used as examples in future classes. Mason was an inspiration and mentor to many of his students.
Alden Mason’s first comprehensive museum exhibition Alden Mason: Fly Your Own Thing is now on view at Bellevue Arts Museum. Organized by the Museum in partnership with the Alden Mason Foundation, Fly Your Own Thing offers a clear overview of Mason’s diverse body of work.
"As it is with most artists I developed my process through years of experimentation. I narrowed it down to mediums that best produce the translucent layers and weathered textures that mimic the delicate, organic physical forms found in nature."
"I opted for this "erosion of culture" idiom when I started this line of book work, because I thought it was a good way to connect with our collective preoccupations in the beginning of the 21st century. But it was obvious from the start that my paintings didn’t fit into that frame."
Avian conservator and artist Tony Angell’s approach to art making has always centered around revealing not just the anatomical attributes of his subjects, but their unique characteristics, and temperaments.
One of the great things about the internet and digital cataloging of pre-computer era art objects is that it preserves their original purpose and importance. I feel it in no way hinders the legacies of those objects, as more people can access the work and learn about their histories. It’s only when someone (an artist, for example) uses the work to manipulate those paintings to make a current day statement on the fragility of legacy.
It’s the medium that tends to keep me interested enough to keep doing it. It’s basically because for over four decades, I’ve never been able to master it. The fact that it’s still a struggle keeps me going.
I grew up in Minnesota where there was a heightened sense of seasonal change. There was the stark intensity of winter, the revival of spring, that enveloping warmth of summer and the blazing intensity of fall. I spent a lot of time at our summer lake cabin. The luminous impact of sky and water, sunrise and sunset, has had a profound lifelong impact on me.
I stumbled upon the condensation of water on a window in 2001 and I realized that the water transformed a normal landscape into a complex abstract painting. Or that it had the potential to do that and then I was obsessed with how water could change my view of everything — literally.
I love to draw and perhaps it is something with the simplicity of the drawing material itself that also brings on simpler shapes, and more abstracted forms in my more recent work. I really do not think much about why these changes are happening, but change is exciting and opens new doors. I am interested in abstraction in itself, in tension and harmony between color and forms, and layers that partially hide but also hints to a narrative.
Abstract landscape painting allows for concepts, ideas and messages to be subtly woven into the depiction of a place. There are many entry points into a painting depending on how deep the viewer wants to go. Aesthetic, scientific, historical, environmental, contemplative, spiritual, healing etc. Being in Nature is a special experience. A ‘Be, Here, Now’ moment that we all yearn for.
Fabric is fundamental to my process. It is an intimate part of our lives. It protects us from the elements, gives us comfort, and a means to express ourselves. It is sensual and essential. I am drawn to fabric because of its changeability and its constancy.