root & cause

 "One of the pleasures for me during the last year has been to visit Paul and to trace the evolution of his engagement with the Cathedral through the drawings and models, the bits of writing and the stacks of books that have gradually accumulated around his studio at Three Cocks Lane.

Norman Chatfield
Residentiary Canon

"He has used the opportunity of the Residency to immerse himself in the life of this great mediaeval cathedral, its past as well as its present.  His close, almost daily contact with the fabric of the cathedral has deepened an already incipient interest in mediaeval art and architecture as a reflection of mediaeval thought.

Professor Peter Wheeler

quotations from Root and Cause, published by Sarah Myerscough Fine Art

Starleaf

 

Commissioned by Nene College, Northampton, 1992

Starleaf is one of a number of smaller public commissions Paul received throughout his career.  This work rehearses several ongoing themes and deploys carved and polished faces typical of works made at that time.

The Beeston 'Stump'

 

Water-Head, Beeston, 2025

I've written before about the difficulties faced by artists making 'public sculpture'. With a substantial number of commissions Paul Mason was all too familiar with both the processes and controversies surrounding the installation of works.  None more so than the above 'Water-Head' commissioned by Nottinghamshire in 1988.  Right from the start there were substantial issues around the piece and its original location in this satellite of Nottingham.  In the first instance, like Leaf Stem in the city centre, it was envisaged as having a fountain through its core that would see water cascading gently over its surface.

Original location - photo credit: Akhtar Khan/Art UK

And like the work in the City Centre, that was decommissioned in the early 90's as UK winds whipped the water off the surface and onto passers by adding a physical dimension to viewers aesthetic displeasure!  However despite it all the work remained in place for quite a time but redevelopment saw its future very uncertain.  Step forward Tamar Feast, a local resident and (since 2018) Trustee of Beeston & District Civic Society).  Tamar first contacted me in 2012 when she wrote in The Beestonian newspaper a passionate defence of the work outlining its history and kickstarted a campaign to have it re-sited rather than thrown on the scrapheap.  

So all credit, to Tamar, first & foremost, abetted by fellow trustees, local government officials and members for the re siting of the work adjacent to the Hoton - City Centre Tram line that now sees Paul's work at two locations (the other being a black marble work outside Lakeside Arts Centre by the University of Nottingham campus).  As I write this I'm getting set to go to a re-dedication of the piece this very day!  And here we are...on Saturday 25th January at 3.30 pm.  Introduced by (on left) Mervyn Brown, Hon. Sec & Trustee of the Beeston & District Civic Society, myself (centre) and Tamar Feast (on right).

 

Untitled & Undated Drawing

I have quite a few drawings that are both untitled and undated. And though I knew his work better than most I cannot be sure exactly when this piece was made. However I suspect it is from the early period after Paul had completed his studies at the Royal Academy in the 1970's or early 80's. It measures 47.5 x 66 cms. Although stylistically from this period some of the forms look forward to works made a decade or two later, particularly the sphere that was revisited in the piece made on his Gloucester Cathedral residency - Puffball and for his Seaham & Isle of Wight commissions.

Puffball, marble, lead inserts, 30 cm. diameter, 2000

excerpt from leaflet 'Six Sculptures along the river Yar' 2002

Leaf Stem

In the mid 1980's Mason was one of a small group of locally based artists chosen to create public artworks for an initiative jointly stimulated by Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire County councils.  With support from East Midlands Arts, through advice from the Visual Arts Officer David Manley, City Technical Services Director John Haslam selected a number of proposals for consideration.  Paul Mason had produced a small maquette in marble for a large work that he envisaged in the same material that would take the form of a fountain. 

Original maquette

This was chosen (alongside pieces by Richard Perry & Hilary Cartmel) to be in the vanguard of an ambitious scheme of re-envisaging the city (to include better street furniture, plantings and surfaces) along the lines of other Continental cities that Haslam had seen on recent excursions to Germany and elsewhere.  For Mason it required a deal of research and the eventual contracting of an Italian marble quarry to supply the stone.  As importantly it further stimulated an interest in Italy and particularly in the marble quarries and the Apuan Alps region of northern Tuscany.  

Following initial visits the artist dispatched the maquette to the workshop in Italy where a phone call suggested the masons there "might rough the stone out" following the form from the piece sent through to them.  The artist was therefore surprised to arrive in Italy to find the piece very nearly completed!  The photo above shows the stone when the artist arrived in the yard...and the one below as sited in Nottingham.  Mason recalled that the workers in the yard told the story of Henry Moore similarly finding a piece virtually completed.  On that occasion the press were invited and with a photo of the 'maestro' about to be taken of him 'finishing' the piece with chisel in hand...the master carver of the yard stepped forward advising that he was holding it at the wrong angle!  Anyone who has visited Carrara, Massa or Pietrasanta and seen some of the exotic pieces carved from this material will see just how complex some of the work can be. 

marble Fiat!

The sited work has been controversial from the beginning.  Like the Beeston piece Water Head, it has been much discussed.  My contribution to this can be found here, in an interview with Tamar Feast.

At Auction

It is rare that a PWM work comes up at auction.  Rarer still outside of the Capital.  But here we have Shifting Ground, a collage from 1985, 23.5 x 63 cm.  It was one of the works in The Cutting Edge, the large, one person exhibition that opened at Bolton Museum & Art Gallery in 1987 and touring to Wolverhampton and Lincoln. It is related to the series of low bas-reliefs  in marble produced in the early nineteen eighties, several of which found their way into public collections.  This piece is featured in the auction of Modern & Contemporary Art at Tennants in Leyburn, North Yorkshire in six days time (10:30 am., 20th October, 2018).

Vertex

Commisioned in 1979 Vertex is the first of the artist's many public works.  Sited in the centre of Harlow New Town on the Broad Walk the piece is in remarkably good condition as seen on the day of my visit (July 2017).  This is in no small part to the choice of a dove grey bardolino marble sourced from Carrara.