Melissa Mason

Creating beauty and order out of chaos, I find it endlessly challenging and fulfilling to start with randomness and then follow it to see where it leads me.  Chance happenings are both catalyst and guide. 

Alternating between calculated drawing and gestural mark-making; focused exploration and spontaneous experimentation; thoughtful color placement and impulsive splashes of paint, I explore the balance between extremes. These paintings, a record of that dialogue, meld my innate need to create with a desire to evoke a visceral response in the viewer.

“I started out my art practice doing portraits of horses. Finding this tediously boring and non-creative, I started exploring other styles of painting. This search led me to an abstract-expressionist mentor. One of the first exercises we did was using movement from our body to make marks on the surface with a large brush with arm extended straight out. The mark I made was just a simple, large black swipe across a 4 ft piece of paper taped to the wall. But the movement contained in that mark captivated me. I was addicted. This is it – this energy is what I wanted to bring to my work!” Melissa Mason