Jon Mason is a New Zealand artist living in Cardiff and is currently displaying work at The Gate Gallery in Cardiff. Lets get to know Jon Mason a bit better:
1. Background of yourself/Biography of yourself up until present day
Born in NZ 1961, mother a painter (Daphne Mason), sister a ceramicist and painter (Janet Mathewson) and a house full of contemporary NZ art. Painting and drawing from an early age, some teaching from mum’s circle of artist friends and later on studied printmaking with Rodney Fumpston and Denys Watkins. Ended up coming across to study at Trinity College Cambridge where I probably spent more time drawing cartoons and working all night in the college dark-room making black and white photographic prints. Recruited by IBM but went to work for a voluntary Christian organisation working internationally for the following decade which took me as far afield as Australia, Korea, Japan, India, China as well as Europe and Turkey. This was followed by another decade working as a business consultant first in Singapore and then back in the UK. Last two years I was working with a national charity to plan and implement a major change programme. I have always painted a few canvases a year but since 2002 have been painting on a more regular basis, initially to cover our household walls with the paintings I wanted to look at. The walls ran out but the paint didn’t... In the past 12 months I have painted well over 80 works, despite being in a full time job for most of that time.
2. Explain your style of art
Tempted to ask if you remember Richard Scarry’s Paint Pig. Alternatively it often feels like I am catching up on the last quarter century and painting out all the stored up thoughts and images and influences. There are two definite channels running, one abstract and semi-abstract and the other about landscape.
