Written by: Hannah Field | Editor-in-Chief<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHarold Mason: A Retrospective,\u201d available for viewing at the Hamersly Library, opened June 8, 2024, to honor artist Harold Mason after his passing in August of 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The exhibition showcases some of Harold Mason\u2019s paintings and artworks, but is not able to encapsulate all of Mason\u2019s lifetime spent creating masterpieces. Throughout his life, he mainly pursued watercolor painting, etching, lithographs, collages and pencil drawings. \u201cHarold Mason: A Retrospective\u201d includes a variety of his different mediums, including pencil sketches of instruments, watercolor seascapes and painted traditional Native vases. Both Harold Mason and his wife, Sue Mason, a fellow artist and potter, drew a lot of inspiration from historic pottery and sought them out in their life together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sue described her husband as having a \u201ccute sense of humor\u201d and being a lovely man. \u201cLike so many artists, he was very sure of himself and yet completely unsure all at the same time \u2014 but he had a good career.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne interesting thing is the seascapes,\u201d said Sue Mason. \u201cHe never did seascapes because he had a good friend who went out on his own at about the same time Harold did, and he did nothing but seascapes. He lived in Mendocino, California, right on the coast, and we were friends with him and his wife, our kids and their kids grew up together. Well, (one day), Harold decided he wanted to get a hold of John, and he found out that he had passed away, so out of consideration for their friendship, he did a seascape\u2026 and he enjoyed it so much that he did a number of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a decent amount of time, Harold and Sue lived in Carmel, California, which sits right on the coast. Sue described the ocean as very dear to their hearts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having married in Switzerland in 1961 due to Harold being drafted into the army and consequently moved to Germany, the two of them spent 61 years living as artists and moving from place to place. They previously lived in California, Maine and New Mexico before settling in Monmouth, Oregon, in a quaint mid-century modern house with a spiral staircase and personal artwork on every wall, almost all handmade by either Harold or Sue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAnd then when we came home (from Germany and Switzerland), we started a family, and when our children, our son was about four and our daughter was about two, we decided it was time for (Harold) to go out on his own and he never looked back,\u201d said Sue regarding his career. \u201cHe made his living from his art. We\u2019re not wealthy, but we had a wealthy life. The arts have been our life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harold Mason started exhibiting his art in 1968 and stopped around 2008 from galleries, but did not quit painting or art. \u201cHe painted up almost until he died,\u201d said Sue. \u201cThat August, the gallery in Independence had asked us to do a show together \u2014 I\u2019m a potter \u2014 and he was too ill to even hang the show, but they hung it for him. So, really, he exhibited forever.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In four decades of exhibiting, Harold became a nationally recognized watercolor artist with a talent for landscape and wildlife, and had his art featured in various shows and museums. He held fourteen one-man shows in Phoenix and Scottsdale, AZ; San Francisco, Oakland and Carmel, CA; and Seattle, WA. The Carnegie Museum of Art in Chicago continues to keep one of Mason\u2019s watercolors in their permanent collection, with the Albuquerque Museum of Art and the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco having featured his work previously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This exhibition is expected to be the last of Harold Mason\u2019s work \u2014 with half of all sales from the artwork on display going to produce art scholarships for Western students looking to further their craft by entering higher education, which Sue Mason highly encourages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI loved my husband\u2019s art just about as much as I loved him,\u201d said Sue Mason, always advertising not only Harold Mason\u2019s work but fellow local artists and their galleries. Sue, still in the art scene and involved with Western, stays on top of who will be exhibiting with the college at Cannon Gallery and with the city of Monmouth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Western has printed multiple copies of an illustrated poetry book, art done by Harold Mason and poems by a family friend, Grant Hoyt, for Sue Mason, with the goal being to eventually publish \u201cCircus Circus.\u201d The book, in loving memory of Harold Mason, showcases various colored and black and white illustrations of hopping dinosaurs \u2014 the final passage being Sue Mason\u2019s favorite and the last lines stating, \u201cCelebrate our circus, share your memories with a friend \/ May the fantasy and wonder live on and never end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It remains to be seen when \u201cCircus Circus\u201d will be available for purchase. Until then, Harold’s artwork may be viewed on the second floor of the Hamersly Library until the end of October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHarold \u2014 he never had to do anything other than his drawings and paintings, and I think that\u2019s worth celebrating. So I wanted to show students that if their art is their thing, to believe in themselves,\u201d said Sue Mason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Contact the author at howleditorinchief@mail.wou.edu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Written by: Hannah Field | Editor-in-Chief \u201cHarold Mason: A Retrospective,\u201d available for viewing at the Hamersly Library, opened June 8, 2024, to honor artist Harold Mason after his passing in August of 2022. The exhibition showcases some of Harold Mason\u2019s paintings and artworks, but is not able to encapsulate all of Mason\u2019s lifetime spent creating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[55,1547,338,3888,1544,3882,3892,3886,1040,1217,3881,1120,1219,3883,3879,451,3880,3885,1634,2742,3884,3878,1545,3891,3889,3893,3890,2141,3887],"class_list":["post-21481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-art","tag-artwork","tag-book","tag-cannon","tag-collage","tag-etching","tag-exhibit","tag-exhibition","tag-gallery","tag-hamersly","tag-harold","tag-inspiration","tag-library","tag-lithograph","tag-lithographs","tag-local","tag-mason","tag-medium","tag-paint","tag-painting","tag-pencil","tag-potter","tag-pottery","tag-retrospective","tag-showcase","tag-sketch","tag-sketches","tag-sue","tag-wife"],"modified_by":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21481"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21524,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21481\/revisions\/21524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}