On the 2016 bandwagon ...

On the 2016 bandwagon, I started a blog 10 years ago.  Looking back at it I am reminded that …
 
A 2 mt brown snake visited my studio where I was working on my first solo exhibition WILD set for Cowra Regional Art Gallery. Tracey Callinan, then of Arts OutWest opened the show where the generous late Tracy Sorensen wrote in her essay of this exhibition “… the beauty amidst the not-quite-right lies at the heart of Nic Mason’s paintings …”
http://www.nicmasonartist.com/blog/archives/01-2016
 
It’s the only snake I’ve seen on this property in over 10 years of living here – there’s been way more blue tongues, echidnas, gangs gangs and a wisdom of wombats along with daily macropods in amongst the white gums and wallaby flats of these Wiradjuri lands that I love. I wrote of my time back then “ … So far, I’ve thought lots and I’ve pretty much created a painting a day. My plan is turn up every day to my studio, put in a good day’s work, live with my mistakes and learn as I go, walk the dog, love my family and just see what happens with my art …” 
 
I couldn’t hold back the tide to paint, resigning from my work in Conservation and Land Management working as a Senior Project Officer for National Parks and Wildlife Service and headed back to studies, this time at the Australian National University in Canberra.  With post graduate studies in the painting workshop, my supervisor Ruth Waller introduced me to painting a ground into my work and much more. Animal skulls, my red bag and a doll from my kid’s great gran were regulars in my studio and on my canvases. My uni practice led project Exploring still life painting as a symbolic or metaphoric vehicle for contemplating issues of environmental loss led me to studying in the Collections Study Room at the National Gallery of Australia (spending time with a Morandi and Auerbach), the CSIRO’s Australian National Wildlife Collection (drawing directly from their collection), and borrowing skulls from Ray Mjadwesch under his licence with National Parks and Wildlife Service. 
http://www.nicmasonartist.com/blog/archives/10-2016
 
The Calleen Art Award, the Korea Australia Arts Foundation KAAF Art Prize, the ANU School of Art Drawing Prize and several other art prizes included my work in their mixes. And I was on my way working towards more bodies of work including STILL my next solo exhibition set for early 2017 where I was immersed in community as a Director of Tablelands Artists Cooperative Gallery. I headed to Carcoar for a portrait workshop led by David Newman White and I also led a few workshops of my own with primary students up at Hill End Public School, O’Connell Public School and Cowra Regional Arts Gallery. 
 
Intense planning too was happening behind the scenes in the lead up to my six-month 2017 artist residency experiences in France heading there with my family of five. 
 
I was giving things a crack, and it was all go. It feels like it was so long ago and just yesterday too as the memories come flooding back.

image: ​Nic Mason, Red bag what, 2016, oil on canvas, 40 x 40 cm, private collection