EMILY MASON
EMILY MASON
A New Surface, a New Problem
September 14th – October 21st, 2023
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WEBER FINE ART
INTRODUCTION
“There’s something about painting I really like, the impression, like blotting, and brushstrokes, just that quality like leaves frozen in ice,” Emily Mason told an interviewer in 19751. That quality comes through especially in her oils on paper from the 1980s. Here, layers of wide strokes, fine streams of diluted paint, and thin washes of color coalesce into complex saturated abstractions. To look at these works is largely to imagine the series of actions that Mason must have performed on the page; one feels a sense of both elapsed time and paused movement.
Just as the freezing of a pond heightens our attention to both the pond’s surface and its depth, Mason’s experiments on paper play with our perception of dimensions. Up close, a viewer can become engrossed in the details of the paint’s materiality, from glittery passages to waxy regions, but from a distance, the eye often focuses on slivers of light and expanses of color that suggest a much larger representational space, like a landscape observed from afar or an aerial view captured from a plane.
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Page 3: Emily Mason in her studio, 1990, Photo: William Whitehurst
Left: Emily Mason in her Vermont studio, 1986, Photo: Jean Davis
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Fault, 1977
Oil on paper
14 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches
36.8 x 358.6 cm
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Madder Play, 1978
Oil on paper
14 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches
36.5 x 36.5 cm
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Untitled, 1978 Oil on paper
14 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches
36.8 x 36.5 cm
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Untitled, 1978
Oil on paper
14 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches
36.8 x 36.8 cm
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14 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches
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Ginger Root, 1979
Oil on paper
36.8 x 36.8 cm
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Untitled, 1979
Oil on paper
14 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches
36.8 x 36.8 cm
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Untitled, 1979
Oil on paper
14 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches
36.8 x 36.8 cm
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Solid State, 1981
26 1/8 x 20 inches
66.4 x 50.8 cm
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Oil on paper
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Untitled, 1981 Oil on paper 26 x 20 1/8 inches 66 x 51.1 cm
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Untitled, 1981
Oil on paper
26 1/8 x 20 inches
66.4 x 50.8 cm
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Untitled, 1981 Oil on paper
14 1/2 x 14 1/2 inches
36.8 x 36.8 cm
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Untitled, 1982
Oil on paper
20 x 26 inches
50.8 x 66 cm
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Untitled, 1982
Oil on paper 26 x 20 inches 66 x 50.8 cm
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Untitled, 1982
Oil on paper 26 x 20 inches 66 x 50.8 cm
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Nautical Night, 1983
26 x 20 inches
66 x 50.8 cm
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Oil on paper
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Velvet Limb, 1984
Oil on paper
26 x 20 inches
66 x 50.8 cm
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Blood Stone, 1985
Oil on paper
40 x 30 inches
101.6 x 76.2 cm
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Every Cloud, 1985 Oil on paper
40 x 30 inches
101.6 x 76.2 cm
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Ice Fire, 1985
Oil on paper
40 x 30 inches
101.6 x 76.2 cm
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Untitled, 1985 Oil on paper
40 x 30 inches
101.6 x 76.2 cm
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Untitled, 1985 Oil on paper
30 x 40 inches
76.2 x 101.6 cm
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Untitled, 1987
Oil on paper
30 x 40 inches
76.2 x 101.6 cm
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Untitled, 1988
Oil on paper
29 x 23 inches
73.7 x 58.4 cm
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Untitled, 1988
Oil on paper
30 x 40 inches
76.2 x 101.6 cm
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After the Fall, 1989 Oil on paper
23 x 29 inches
58.4 x 73.7 cm
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Asiatic Rain, 1989 Oil on paper
29 x 23 inches
73.7 x 58.4 cm
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South Pond, 1989
Oil on paper
23 x 29 inches
58.4 x 73.7 cm
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Transparent Slope, 1989
Oil on paper
29 x 23 inches
73.7 x 58.4 cm
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Untitled, 1990
Oil on paper
29 x 23 inches
73.7 x 58.4 cm
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Untitled, 1990
Oil on paper
29 x 23 inches
73.7 x 58.4 cm
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Untitled, 1990
Oil on paper
29 x 23 inches
73.7 x 58.4 cm
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CHRONOLOGY
1932
Emily Mason is born in New York City on January 12. Her mother is the artist Alice Trumbull Mason, and her father is Warwood Edwin Mason, a sea captain for American Export Lines.
1934–37
She attends the Little Red Schoolhouse in Greenwich Village.
1946–50
She attends the High School of Music and Art. In June 1950, Mason graduates from the High School of Music and Art and enrolls in Bennington College in Vermont.
1952
Mason transfers from Bennington College to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York. In the summer, Mason attends the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, where she is particularly influenced by Jack Lenor Larsen’s lecture on analogous color.
1954–55
In the summer of 1954, Mason travels throughout Europe. The trip has an enormous impact on Mason and shapes much of her understanding of Western art. In France, she sees the recently discovered Lascaux Caves. In Italy, she sees Giotto’s frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, the mosaics in Ravenna, and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.
Mason graduates from Cooper Union in 1955. In the summer of that year, she attends the Yale-Norfolk Summer School of Art.
1956
Mason is awarded a Fulbright Grant to study in Venice. In April, she meets the artist Wolf Kahn at the Artist’s Club in New York and spends the summer with him in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In the fall, Mason sets sail for Italy along with other Fulbright scholars, including the artist Lee
Bontecou. She then travels to Venice and enrolls in the Accademia di Belle Arti. In December, Mason travels to meet Kahn in Le Havre, France. They visit Paris before returning together to Venice.
1957
In Venice, Mason and Kahn rent the large central room of a palazzo on the Giudecca. They are married in March. In the spring, the couple travels to Rome, where Mason sees the Jackson Pollock show at the Museo d’Arte Moderna. Mason’s paintings earn her a second year of the Fulbright grant.
1958
In April, Mason and Kahn travel to Greece, before spending another summer in Venice. In November, Mason and Kahn set off for the United States, stopping first in Paris and then in Spain. In Madrid, they visit the Prado Muse- um. They depart for New York from Gibraltar.
1959
Back in New York, Mason and Kahn live in a loft on Broadway and 12th Street. In September, Mason gives birth to a daughter, Cecily. At the end of the year, Mason joins the Area Gallery on 10th Street, an artist-run space.
1960–62
Mason’s first solo exhibition opens at the Area Gallery in 1960. It features her Venice work. Another two shows follow in 1961 and 1962. In the fall of 1962, Mason returns to Italy with her family. They settle in Milan for the winter.
1964
In March, Mason gives birth to her second daughter, Melany, in Rome.
1965
The family returns to New York.
1968
Emily Mason in her studio, circa 1980s
In the spring, Mason and Kahn purchase a farm in West Brattleboro, Vermont. Mason uses the combined blacksmith’s shop and chicken coop as a studio.
Photo: Katherine Lowell 69
1973
In April, Mason and her family travel to Kenya. They visit Nairobi, the Samburu National Reserve, Lake Naivasha, Malindi, Lamu Island, Masai Mara National Reserve, and Marsabit.
1977
An exhibition of Mason’s work opens at the Landmark Gallery in New York. Two more exhibitions follow in 1978 and 1981.
1979
Mason moves her studio from Broadway to West 20th Street. In the fall, she begins teaching part-time at Hunter College.
1984
A solo exhibition of Mason’s work opens at the Grace Borgenicht Gallery in New York. Mason exhibits with Borgenicht in 1987, 1990, and 1992.
1985
The Associated American Artists gallery commissions a print edition from Mason. She employs a technique suggested by the printmaker Anthony Kirk, using carborundum to establish an image from which to print.
1997
Mason begins to show at the MB Modern Gallery in New York. She exhibits there in 1998, 1999, and 2001.
2001
Mason begins exhibiting at David Findlay Jr Gallery, New York, where she shows regularly through 2015.
2004
A solo exhibition of Mason’s paintings opens at the LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she continues to show up through the present. An exhibition of Mason’s prints opens at the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy.
2005
A solo exhibition of Mason’s prints opens at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Vermont. A solo exhibition of Mason’s paintings opens at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art in Maine.
2008
Contemplating Color, a traveling exhibition of Mason’s paintings organized by LewAllen Galleries, is shown at LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe and at The Art Museum of South Texas in Corpus Christi.
2016
Mason begins exhibiting at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe (now Miles McEnery Gallery) in New York.
2017
A solo exhibition of Mason’s paintings opens at Miles McEnery Gallery in New York.
2019
A solo exhibition of Mason’s paintings opens at Miles McEnery Gallery in New York. Mason, and her husband of sixty-two years, the artist Wolf Kahn, are each awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Arts from Marlboro College in Vermont. Emily Mason dies on 10 December.
2020
Emily Mason is selected for the Masters Honorary Show at The Century Association in New York. “She Sweeps with Many-Colored Brooms”: Paintings and Prints by Emily Mason opens at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT. 2023
”A New Surface, A New Problem,” a solo exhibition of Mason’s paintings, opens at Weber Fine Art in Greenwich, CT.
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SELECT COLLECTIONS
Alexander Foundation, New York, NY
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH
Art in Embassies, US Department of State, Washington, D. C.
Bates College, Lewiston, ME
Bennington Museum of Art, Bennington, VT
Boston Mutual Life, Canton, MA
The Century Association, New York, NY
Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Felton International, New York, NY
Moore Free Library, Newfane, VT
Morgan Stanley, New York, NY
Morgan Stanley, Tokyo, Japan
National Academy Museum, New York, NY
New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
Rockefeller Group, New York, NY
Rutgers University Archives, New Brunswick, NJ
Springfield Museums, Springfield, MA
University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM
University of New Hampshire, Museum of Art, NH
Washington County Museum of Art, Hagerstown, MD
Watkins Corporation, London, United Kingdom
Wheaton College, Norton, MA
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CREDIT:
“Emily Mason’s Works on Paper, 1977-1990,” essay © 2023 Mira Dayal
All works by Emily Mason are reproduced courtesy of the Emily Mason | Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation. All rights reserved.
SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Miles McEnery Gallery
Steven Rose
Emily Mason | Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation
Contact 12 Havemeyer Place Greenwich, CT p: 203 422 5375
lee@weberfineart.com
michelle@weberfineart.com
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