Drawings

Paul Mason was a prolific draughtsman - not for the sculptures themselves (such drawings are few and infrequent other than occasionally for public art works) but more as a practice in its own right. In the 00's this practice took on a major role with a great deal of resulting work, some on a relatively large scale. Indeed the number and variety of works is such that identifying them all as regards titles and/or dates is difficult.

This is one such work - it measures 99 x 68.5 cms and is drawn in charcoal. It deploys frottage to convey part of the surface texture and uses a wild and relatively uncontrolled range of marks to suggest a whirling vortex. The imagery is such that it might date from the period 2000 to 2001 when Mason was Artist In Residence at Gloucester Cathedral - it bears resemblance to the sculpture Root.

Harbour, 1983 is a small landscape based relief, some 7" in height. In the essay of the catalogue for the exhibition 'The Cutting Edge' (Bolton Museum & Gallery and touring, 1987) Peter Wheeler said

(it) is a small and spontaneous looking piece. Its size and apparent rapidity of execution contradict conventional notions of carved sculpture as difficult and long-winded. For Mason, working against inherited ideas either of technique or purpose and expectations of stone, is a way of remaining alive to its potential, and extending its language.

The Internal Sea

This piece, 'The Internal Sea', (1996, limestone, pigment) was shown in the entrance alcove at Tate St. Ives during the residency exhibition in 1996. The artist said of the work that it

is a return to the metaphysical nature of being the physical self possessing infinite capacity for feeling and expression within the very specific limits of our bodily frame. The blue broken surface, suggesting an interior quite different to what is expected, at the same time itself such an obvious "surface" is full of paradox, irony and contradiction.

Artist's Project - Tate St. Ives/Barbara Hepworth Museum

Between May and September 1996 Paul was invited to exhibit a series of sculptures, drawings and a 'didactic display' at Tate St. Ives. The published brochure explains that

At the heart of the project was an invitation to Paul Mason to also make a new carving from uncut stone remaining in Barbara Hepworth's studio. As with a previous project with the sculptor Peter Randall-Page, this element of the project was made possible by the generosity of the Trustees of the Barbara Hepworth Estate and the artist's family, who make available this stone.

He was extremely grateful for the opportunity to work this piece of stone - and even more excited by the opportunity to do so in the small garage studio opposite the entrance to the home of the artist. Paul wrote of the experience

It was not intimidating to work on this piece of marble in the sense that it was once Hepworth's. However the proportions of the block are 4' 6" by 18" by 12", and so I felt as though it was ordered for a particular purpose. I know when I am ordering marble, if you are ordering a solid block you try and get it as cheaply as you can, to get the maximum out of the order. Often blocks are evenlu proportioned. These distinct proportions made me think that she either ordered blocks for specific pieces or she regularly ordered blocks that size. This definitely had, for example, a front and back. It had distinct axes. I was conscious of these being her decisions.

Amongst the works was an installation entitled Strata, shown above, of which the artist wrote

The courtyard installation Strata which is three pitched slabs of granite balanced on white marble chippings with molten lead poured into incised lines, is on one level a formal response to the classicism of the architecture and space itself providing a counterpoint in its brutal, physical shaping, as well as combining the granite - igneous, fire formed - with marble - heat and pressure formed, originally laid down on the ocean floor as eroded sedimentary material.

National Stone Centre

This work - Landle, from 1989, carved from Ancaster Limestone (29cms high) was featured in an exhibition that Paul curated for the opening of the National Stone Centre, Ravenstor Road, Wirksworth, Derbyshire initiated by East Midlands Arts in 1989. It was a part of a short period of residency by the artist at the Centre. In the small publication that accompanied the exhibition Paul wrote:

When I was a student at Wolverhampton Poly in 1971, I collected some stone from the small quarry of Ancaster in Lincolnshire. I left the main road and headed across a field towards a spinney of trees. I drove down a winding, narrow, heavily rutted track which eventually opened out to reveal a broad golden wall, the land mass laid bare, earth and soil stripped back, the ranks of regimented drill marks standing to attention in the early sun.

This short statement in turn revealed that the artist's (as I wrote in the introduction to the publication)

professional reputation and career is rooted in the use of stone, but he is also a passionate enthusiast for stone as a material in any context.

Alongside Paul's work he selected other pieces by Christine Angus, Michael Farrell, George Kennethson, Liz Lemon, John Paddison, and Richard Perry. In addition specially commissioned photographs of the topology of the centre were shown by Oded Shimshon.

Stone Landscapes - A Geometry of Fracture

This exhibition took place at the Quay Arts Centre, Isle of Wight in the summer of 2005. In my introduction to the catalogue 'The Fruit That Grows In Man' I wrote:

In the first place there is something noble about bringing nature indoors, or of using it as a principle by which to structure an interior space; as an artistic engagement with the natural "order of things". In the second there is the sense of place, or more accurately places. For Paul Mason has been traveling again; Hoy, Malham Cove in Yorkshire, here in the Isle of Wight. Such travels open up places in his eyes and then ours, Malham Cove is a huge curving amphitheatre shaped cliff formation of limestone rock with a vertical face about 260 feet high. The top of the cove is a large area of deeply eroded limestone pavement, of a strange pattern rarely seen in England. No direct reference to this in the works but so many rich and pointed associations.

In this new work one is immediately struck by the close resemblance between the handmade marks and the depictions of leaves and branches, rocks and grains of sand, suggesting that there is a symmetrical relationship between nature and those who seek to order and shape it. And an imperfection here or there, for it is these that make perfect our imperfect view. The artist speaks of the 'binocular vision', how touch trades punches with what is visual. Not only on this occasion in stone sculptures, but in paintings, drawings, torn paper collage and wood relief too.

Whether in an Enlightened or a Romantic spirit, perhaps after Ruskin and following Stokes, every effort to order the natural environment is an act of deciphering, of a close and attentive reading. The work of Paul Mason offers a kind of second-order reading, a reading of the way we read nature. It's as simple and as complicated as that. The things that stand in the artist's study or decorate his walls are the things that evade his attempts at categorization. The rest is an uncharted wilderness.

Jean Arp, a constant source of inspiration for Mason, insisted that his sculpture was 'concrete' rather than 'abstract', since it occupied space, and that art was a natural generation of form: 'a fruit that grows in man', as he put it. How apt.

The work illustrated is a small marble work from 1996 entitled 'Wrapped Earth'.

Obituary

The following obituary (written by the author of this blog) gives a brief further introduction to Paul's life and activities. It appeared in The Independent on Friday 19th May 2006.

Paul William Mason, sculptor: born Bolton, Lancashire 23 June 1952; Professor of Sculpture, Derby University 2004-06; married first Susan Disley (one son; marriage dissolved), second Emma Talbot (two sons); died London 9 May 2006. In a generation of distinguished British sculptors, following on in the tradition of Henry Moore, Paul Mason stood out for his continuing adherence to the traditions of stone carving in a manner that Moore would certainly have approved of, not only with regard to form, but also meaning and context.

Mason, born in Bolton, Lancashire, in 1952, studied under a number of Royal Academicians; John "Paddy" Paddison at Wolverhampton Polytechnic and Willi Soukop in the Academy Schools themselves stand out.

An early break in his career came with a commission from Sir Freddie Gibberd - Hinge (1977) was a 5ft piece in red sandstone, to be sited outdoors in Harlow New Town, where Mason first found himself in the company of major post-war figures in the medium, and this founded a line of enquiry on which much of his reputation is based. Public commissions in Leeds, Nottingham, Southampton, Edinburgh, and, most notably, in 1985, for Centenary Square in Sheffield, followed; the last was a complete scheme in which Mason was lead artist, a pattern of working which has been copied widely in such projects across the UK.

In 1985, Mason undertook "The Cutting Edge", a major solo exhibition of sculpture and associated drawings - a second strand of activity that formed an important part of his output - that toured from his home town to Wolverhampton and Lincoln. In 1996, during a residency at the Tate St Ives, he was awarded a singular accolade: he was invited to utilise Barbara Hepworth's studio and carve a piece of stone from it that formed a centrepiece in an exhibition, "Paul Mason: new sculpture for Tate St Ives".

More recently, in 2000-01, he undertook a year-long residency in Gloucester Cathedral and the carvings that resulted were extremely sensitive responses to the spirituality of the surroundings. At around the same time he exhibited drawings in the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin in and in some of these works, amongst his most experimental, can be found new ideas and approaches to his thinking about form and structure.

His last exhibition, "Stone Landscapes - a geometry of fracture" was in May 2005 at Quay Arts, in Newport, Isle of Wight. In his own notes, Mason said:

My works attempt to recognise and emulate the natural forces inherent in both carving and the geology. There is something deeply attractive and satisfying about the sculptural processes on both scales, and the dialogue between them that occurs quite naturally within the fragment and the whole.

Mason continued to produce significant outdoor works in both traditional settings, at Seaham Promenade in Co Durham for example, in 1998, as well as smaller-scale and more intimate works, such as the series of carvings for the River Yar on the Isle of Wight in 2001. In all these projects he focused on simple, natural forms, investing them with fresh insights and configurations. Throughout his career, his abiding passions for stone, landscape and history informed all his works and, as Professor Peter Wheeler remarked in his catalogue introduction to the exhibition "Root and Cause" (2002), the outcome of his Gloucester residency,

for Mason, his sculpture is the product of natural intentionality, that is not opposed to human intentionality, it does not contradict nature's formativity, but rather extends it.

A generous artist and an inspirational teacher, he taught at the art schools in Loughborough, Staffordshire, Northumbria and Derby, working in and more recently running departments in which innovation went hand in hand with an understanding of tradition and history. In recognition of his contribution, he was awarded the title of Professor of Sculpture at Derby University in 2004.

Both as artist and teacher, Paul Mason demonstrated an unswerving respect for the primacy of the creative act and, in many of his projects he encouraged and supported others to invest their creativity with a similar passion. This manifested itself in workshops with the visually handicapped as well as working with schoolchildren on associated activities related to his public art projects for which there are lasting legacies throughout the UK.

He is survived by his wife, Emma Talbot, herself a distinguished painter, and two young sons Zachary and Daniel, and by his son, Joseph, from his earlier marriage to the ceramicist Susan Disley.

The image shown above is of a small tribute exhibition of work by Paul put together by colleagues and students to accompany the University of Derby BA (Hons) Fine Art exhibition in June 2006.

Introduction

This is a site devoted to the collection and dissemination of material related to the life and work of the sculptor, Paul William Mason (1952 - 2006). Perhaps best known for his public works of which Leafstem, pictured above, is a notable early example this site is intended to collect together the majority of his works over a career that began in the 1970's and continued until his untimely death and covered a wide range of sculptures, drawings and other media. Leafstem was commissioned by Nottingham City and County Councils under the direction of the City's farsighted Director of Technical Services, John Haslam in the early 1980's.