Bio
Nic Mason, With the kitchenalia and banksia posse, 2023, oil on canvas, 61.5 x 153cm
Nic Mason is a visual artist who lives and works in regional Australia near Bathurst in Wiradjuri Country. She primarily paints and draws in her art practice.
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Nic has held a total of eight solo exhibitions, participated in three two person exhibitions and numerous group shows since her first solo exhibition, WILD in Cowra Regional Art Gallery in 2016. This exhibition kick started her art practice following winning the 2015 Central West Regional Art Award, through Cowra Regional Art Gallery. In 2022 Nic's solo exhibition, Nicola Mason: Cycle at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery co-occurred with Sidney Nolan: Drought, Robert Hirschmann: Past Night and Hui Selwood: Cubi and other passages. Her works have been exhibition exhibited in a number of other regional galleries including group exhibitions in Orange Regional Gallery including Conversations with Clarice Beckett supported by the National Gallery of Australia in 2024/25, Western Plains Cultural Centre with Art of Threatened Species 2019 and Hazelhurst Gallery with Movers and Shapers in 2018.
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Nic's work has been selected for numerous national art exhibitions and prizes including the Wynne Prize 2026, Art Gallery of NSW and both the S. H. Ervin Salon des refusés (alternate Archibald portrait) in 2023 and 2021 and the Salon des refusés (alternate Wynne landscape) 2021. Her work has received recognition being commended through to winning over 20 art prizes including being awarded the Early Career Art Award at the Grace Cossington Smith Art Award, Grace Cossington Smith Gallery 2024; Winner of the Inaugural Central Belonging Art Prize, Cowra Regional Art Gallery 2025 and was Highly Commended in the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing, PLC Croydon, 2020. Her works have additionally been selected as a finalists in numerous other national awards including the Portia Geach Memorial Award, Shirley Hannon National Portrait Award, Calleen Art Award; Muswellbrook Art Prize; Collie Art Prize; Paddington Art Prize; Tatiara Art Prize, Redland Art Award; Basil Sellers Art Prize; Nillumbik Prize for Contemporary Art, Lake Art Prize; Waverley Art Prize, Macquarie Group Emerging Artist Prize; The Waterhouse Natural Science Art Award; Korea Australia Arts Foundation Art Award along with being a semi finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize and the Moran Contemporary Photographic Prize.
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Nic's practice has been propelled by a number of residencies, bursaries and grants including her 2024 Squatters Residency, The Foundations, Portland, 2023 Ironbark Residency a collaboration between Stuart Town STA and Orana Arts Inc; 2020 Australian Consortium for In-Country Indonesian Studies (ACICIS) internship / residency at Babaran Segaragunung Culture House; 2019 Bundanon Artist in Residence program through Bundanon Trust; 2018-19 Art of Threatened Species residency, a collaboration between Orana Arts Inc and the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment; and 2017 residency at the Centre d'Art Marnay Art Centre (Camac), France. In seeking and valuing family cultural exchange activities she has taken the opportunity with these residencies to travel to France and Indonesia with her family in tow.
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Nic's immersion in local communities is also evidenced by her rich involvement in running workshops such as her 2024 kids art workshops at Cowra Regional Art Gallery, 2023 Charcoal Workshop at The Uncooperative, at WAYOUT, a Cementa Initiative. She was a Member and then Director of Tablelands Artist Cooperative Gallery, Bathurst from 2013 to 2017 and has regularly participated in Art in the Park, Bathurst for over 10 years since 2016. In 2026 Nic co-curated Domestic Dreams with Steven Cavanagh involving 24 Central West artists and in 2021 she co-coordinated Grey Foundations with an organising group and 19 artists from her 2019 University of New South Wales (UNSW) Art & Design Honours year cohort , both exhibiting at WAYOUT Artspace, a Cementa Initiative. Since 2023 Nic has worked with Arts OutWest as a Projects Communications and Administration Officer.
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Nic's work is held in various Collections in Australia and abroad including Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Collection following her solo exhibition Nicola Mason: Cycle in 2022. Her works have also entered the Collections of the Country Universities Centre, Mudgee and Columbia Aged Care Services, Oberon through winning Acquisitive prizes.
Nic's work is richly informed by her background in conservation and land management after attaining a Science degree majoring in resource and land management from Macquarie University.. In the middle of 2016 she resigned from her employment position as a Senior Project Officer with NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service to focus on her art practice and to commence post graduate studies in the painting workshop at the Australian National University. She has been listed on the Dean's List for Academic Excellence for her 2019 Honours Year at UNSW Art and Design.. |
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In the Studio
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Nic Mason lives and works near Bathurst in Wiradjuri country, regional Australia.
The studio she works in (when not in use by one of her teens) is a miners cottage rich in stories - many of which find their way back with oral histories from neighbours and visitors returning to their past. It is thought that this dwelling is a remnant from the gold mining days of the mid to late 19th Century. Around a century later this cottage and place became a retreat for the artist, activist and philosopher Margaret Grafton. To more recent times, where Gabrielle, once the teenager inhabiting the nineties in this place, returned to the cottage and revealed her experience of shared story making centred around the mysterious Marika Gusuna, tagged on the wall. Do tell if you have news on Marika. |
Acknowledgement of Country
I acknowledge and pay my respects to the Wiradjuri elders past, present and emerging, who are the traditional owners of the land where I live and work.
I acknowledge and pay my respects to the Wiradjuri elders past, present and emerging, who are the traditional owners of the land where I live and work.