About Alan Mason

general info about the person who makes the pictures . .

So, who is this Alan Mason character ?

Getting older by the day, perhaps a bit wiser and if possible, even more fascinated with two dimensional art.

From the age of about 3 – had only one great ambition in life – which was to be an artist. An early fascination with the pictures of Vermeer and Albrecht Durer, formed an impression and a respect for art, which has endured ever since.

Age and maturity brought an appreciation of painting in a wider sense, encompassing the works of the modern movements, impressionism, neo impressionism, expressionism, surrealism, dada. you name it, I’ve been there.
Simple economic reality propelled me from school into a mundane office environment, which I stuck for about three years.
I gained acceptance onto a full time fine arts course at Sunderland, where I began seriously to follow my vocation. It was at this place that I developed an interest in photography, at the age of about 20, I was merrily printing my own work in the darkroom and also making prints on a huge etching press which would have done credit to Rembrandts workshops.
I felt that the course at Sunderland wasn’t art oriented enough. Whilst I was trying hard to be an artist in the painterly sense of the word, many of my fellow students were constructing giant toothpaste tubes from cardboard or papier mache pyramids in which to store and add magical powers to their cannabis.
Nothing wrong with this, but not quite the same area as my leanings.

I decided to go it alone. I left the course and set up a studio in a town called Cullercoats, spending two years basically working from a garret of sorts – I rented studio space in a disused theatre. I had the stage area – the coloured lights were fun . . .
Although I took part in and even organised many exhibitions of paintings, this turned out, perhaps due to my lack of business expertise, into a somewhat Quixotic venture.
Reality struck again.
Fell in love, got married, needed money, took various jobs – basically to pay the mortgage. All the while continuing to paint and print at both the studio of the Newcastle Society of Artists and at the Charlotte Press, where I got my hands on those copper plates, acid baths and Rembrandt style etching presses again, I also cycled up my involvement with photography – using the darkrooms of a collective in Newcastle called Spectro.

Fine art became commercial art, I became an illustrator, producing finished artwork for publication. Much of it airbrush work, I put my soul into my art again, however the commercial artwork meant long hours, some of the work smacked of drudgery.
A mortgage later, I have emerged into the light as a photographer with a studio in the county town of Morpeth, Northumberland, where my work has built quite a good name for itself. That’s the past . . . .

I’ve recently won a stack of awards for my Wedding, Fashion and Portrait photography.

I even ended up placed in the top 8 Avant Garde Wedding Photographers in the UK. that isn’t too bad.

(but hasten to add that I certainly make no claim to be No 1 in the U.K. – anyway – who can say that one persons work is better than anothers . . .?  it’s all subjective anyway).

In this business – if you start to relax
you’ll find you’re sliding backwards.

So I’ve gotta keep on creating – theres’ only one way to go – and that’s forwards!