Max Mason: In The Field, Landscapes and Ball Parks
July 12-30th 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 16th 3-6pm
Artist’s talk: Saturday July 30th 2-3 pm
Blue Mountain Gallery will be exhibiting “In the Field, Landscapes and BallParks, July 12th-30th. The realist paintings celebrate a variety of landscapes, light and subjects that are close to his heart. They are descriptive of place, but not overly literal. The shadow of the grandstand approaching the pitcher’s mound, the soft edge of a tree line in the distance are all part of a larger whole that reveres and celebrates the natural world and man’s involvement with it.
If they, like some American regionalist painting from the 1920s and ‘30s, evoke a sentimental longing or youthful optimism, so much the better.
Artist Statement:
Like my teacher, Neil Welliver, I grew up traipsing around the woods, and, because I loved being outside, studied geology at college. At the University of Wyoming I realized that that love was misplaced. The part of geology I loved was standing up high and seeing how light and shadow moved across the land and defined it. After taking some classes at the Boston Museum School I went to Penn to study with Neil Welliver and other painters of the “New Realism” school. While at Penn I realized my love of baseball could be an exciting and productive painting subject as well. The baseball paintings were essentially landscapes with buildings, figures and dramatic light, the same as my other landscapes.
Recently I’ve been painting landscapes from life of the central Missouri farm that has been in my family since the early 19th century. The two subjects have, from the beginning, informed and supported each other.
Max Mason and his wife have made Philadelphia their home. He has been exhibiting regularly at the Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia since 1986, and has also exhibited at the George Krevsky Gallery in San Francisco, The Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, OH, as well as the U.S. embassies in Cairo, Egypt, and Ottawa, Canada among others. He has done many murals, interior and exterior, most notably- The Penn Club, in New York City, The Pennsylvania State Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, PA, and Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, the home of the Philadelphia Phillies. This is his first one person show in New York City.