Penny Mason: Recent Works

It’s an odd and contradictory thing that for creativity to thrive - space and freedom is needed … but strangely it also needs something to push against - a limit - a “rule” … whether it be constructed, emotional or imagined. It is also true, that through time, an artist builds muscle memory for their technique which combines with a library of a lifetime’s observations and experiences to draw upon as they pursue their creative practice.

The bedrock of Penny Mason’s practice is found deep within her being … as a Tasmanian whose formative experiences were of Flinders Island, Hobart and journeys between the two. Her art is steeped in this intense and beautiful island filled with wild places, forests, mountains and coastline. The private language scattered through her watercolours comes out of a life-time of art-making and creative practice built upon these foundations.

A graduate of the Tasmanian School of Art (1970), where she met her life partner, fellow artist David Marsden, she also received Masters degrees at both the University of Tasmania (1999) and Monash University (2004).

Her art practice has been complemented by teaching, broken by travel and a transformative trip overseas in 1975 during which Penny and David journeyed across from Thailand, India through to Greece. Travelling through northern India, made a huge impact. Each town different from the next. She remembered instead of taking photos, making paintings … small, abstract and colourful … floating forms emerged as she captured the colourful traditional costumes of village women. A particularly vivid memory in a village just across the border of Nepal. Intricate geometric ‘argyle like’ - tattoos revealed when women flipped their stiff, pleated black skirts between their legs as they sat on their heels. Colours and shapes, brilliant and in constant movement … images and memories of walking/circulating/flowing around her … living abstraction … colours blurring and changing. These drops of experience seeping into her memory … adding to her library from which to borrow later.

Returning to Launceston, Penny took up a teaching position at the University of Tasmania. The 80s in Launceston, and indeed Tasmania generally, were an interesting time; the rise of the Conservation movement which saw the Franklin River Dam defeated in landmark High Court decision; the establishment of the Wilderness Society; the emergence of key political figures who were passionate advocates for and pivotal to protecting the natural treasures of Tasmania - the likes of Bob Brown, Robert McMahon and Libby Watson-Brown. The arts and culture sector was also dynamic and lively - Launceston Art Society encouraging artists of the region; Gary Cleveland was working towards the establishment of Design Tasmania; QVMAG complemented what was happening through its collections and exhibitions; small but significant contemporary galleries and artist-run-spaces were emerging. The Cockatoo Gallery (later to become Arthouse Gallery) in Tamar Street which attracted to itself many significant artists such as Penny herself, Julie Payne, Jane Deeth, Micky Allan, David Castle, Raymond Arnold among others. It was a place full of energy blending artists, students, jewellers, ceramicists, furniture makers, designers and other creatives enriching Tasmania’s cultural and community life.

Penny is lively - interested and interesting. She has huge capacity for living and a curiosity about the world that is underpinned by an articulate and keen intellect. It is no small thing to be invited into an artist’s world - their most important space … their studio … and none more so than Penny’s.

Penny’s home is her studio. Her practice is woven into the business of living. As her family grew… pulled by teaching and students demands … pressures of exhibition and prize deadlines she was living a busy life. Work fitted in and around life’s rhythms. Her work evolved as part of that life.

Created in domestic spaces… she had to be able to pick up and put down her pieces and not “lose her place” or rhythm of creating. By necessity, a ‘rule’ that developed her approach was “line by line”. Earlier works saw rows of letters/words worked sequentially row by row .. building up the composition. While the rule didn’t change, these letters dissolved into other mark making … creating her own private floating language.

Taking a “derive” approach, Penny self-selected rules in approaching her work which gave her boundaries - a cut-through from the “blank” page block. In doing so she released the flow of her pictographic language allowing it to take form, to move and lead her … without surrendering creative freedom and allowing a level of serendipity to work.

The physicality of preparing her paper … soaking the back of paper - upside down on a sheet of cotton … lowering the large acrylic sheet down onto the paper’s surface so it sticks … removing air bubbles and pushing out excess water with a towel and rolling pin (the size of which is not to be trifled with) … till the perfect ground presents itself … once dry, scattering of the rice and positioning the detail; her markers, her fragments. Once settled, her attention moves to blocking the background. In multiple washes … rewetting, drying, wetting and drying … re-working the ground - each cycle taking between 1 and 2 hours. The exacting amount of wetness … allowing the pigment to settle … forming eddies of sediment - granulation … perfectly imperfect … a technique honed by a life-time of experience and skill.

Once dry … the sheet is removed from the acrylic with scattered negatives positioned. The details are filled in. Possible further washes ensue. Each time the sheet is remounted onto the acrylic, rolled and pressed … and once dry removed for further working … the cycle continuing as long as is needed to bring into being the ultimate work.

Throughout, Penny dances a precarious line between intuition and technique; process and the innately peripatetic nature of watercolour. All fraught with possible disaster but under her hands, the confidence of life-long muscle memory of art making.

For me, her work points to the wonder of the universe, the infinite … but also the treasured minutia of life … a forest floor; a pebble strewn beach; the curl of bull kelp backlit by the sun; the shapes and outlines of things that caught her eye … building up with every detail a kind of “pre-conscious seeing” - a feeling or response to place. Capturing the peripheral … those moments of joy that grabs your attention. In her work you could be looking up into space; or down into the depths of the ocean; or through the molecular fabric of life … or time itself.

This is work that moves and changes constantly. It quietly leads us to what is important and often missed in the busyness of the day … causing us to stop, to take a moment … pay attention to the world around us.

Penny Mason: Recent Work
Exhibition dates: 18 February to 15 March 2023
Blenheim Gallery and Garden, Cressy
@pennymasontas

© Belinda Cotton, 2023

Photographer credit: David Marsden

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