Gallery With A Cause • Located in the New Mexico Cancer Center • Benefitting the NMCC Foundation
Please call gallery director Regina Held to arrange a private gallery tour, make a purchase, or ask any questions.
BIOGRAPHY
Tyler Mason was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the arts, music, architecture, and varied landscapes shaped his interests. Family road trips throughout the West fostered his love of national parks, the Desert Southwest, and the Pacific coast.
He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania, along with studies in music. Composition, drawing, and sketching laid the foundation for his later work in watercolor.
Mason began painting watercolor in Denver and continued throughout a 40-year architecture career in New Mexico. Since retiring, he has focused more fully on painting. He is a Signature Member of the New Mexico Watercolor Society and a member of the Plein Air Painters of New Mexico and the New Mexico Art League.
ARTIST STATEMENT
The landscapes of the American West inspire me with their shapes, colors, shadow and light, and sheer vastness. Many of my subjects come from national parks, monuments, and other public lands. I choose a subject for its spirit and feeling, and for how it may become a somewhat abstracted composition on paper.
I favor wet-in-wet techniques to achieve softness and atmosphere. I enjoy how paint and paper dry, how colors mix when wet, and how unpainted areas become highlights. The results may vary from the original idea.
Working mostly from sketches, photographs, and older paintings, I shape my work around the general ideas of the subject rather than photo-realism. I look for glowing color and an overall softness that evokes a timeless, calming, and peaceful result. My work is a celebration of our public lands and western landscapes, created for people to enjoy time and again.