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Indelible Souls -
Reviews
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PDFof EMC newspaper article
Artist couple in first joint show at Cube next month.
July 31, 2009
By Rosalyn Stevens
rstevens@thenewsemc.ca
EMC Entertainment
— They’ve been a couple since high school and married since 1995, but
artists Becky Mason and Reid McLachlan are about to embark on a brand new
experience.
Though they have successfully shown their artwork independently throughout
the area, the two have never seen their work side by side, which will change
after they are both featured in an upcoming show at Cube Gallery.
Indelible Souls opens on Aug. 5 at the Hintonburg gallery and runs until the
month’s end. It will feature several pieces of work ranging from Ms. Mason’s
nature-inspired expressionist paintings to Mr.McLachlan’s figurative,
impressionist work.
“I was a bit skeptical,” Ms. Mason said of the show, “because the work is
so diverse. But if it’s hung really well, it’s going to be really great.”
In all other parts of their lives the couple works together, supporting one
another in new ideas and initiatives.
But when it comes to their artistry, they claim to be “polar opposites,”
keeping their studios separate and their ideas to themselves.
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Even in selecting
pieces for the show, the artistic process was done independent of one another.
Ms. Mason said the artwork she’s selected focuses on trees and forests, a
theme closer to her heart. For Mr. McLachlan, he’s trying out a different
theme, featuring all new work created this year.
“One of the themes I’ve been exploring is the heavens, if you will,” he
said, adding that he’s taken notice of how often individuals are looking
skyward, either in happiness, grief, or seeking answers.
Assistant curator at Cube, Beth Levin, said the show was put together because
gallery owner Don Monet felt the work represents the connectivity of the couple,
despite the apparent differences.
“We show both of the artists here,” she said, “and they are life partners.
They both have the same love of the outdoors and nature and canoeing.
In a passage written about the show, Mr. Monet compares their work to the art of
theatre.
“Reid’s work reminds me of the action on stage, the characters and their
props,” he wrote. “Each one of his pieces seems to imply an
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entire narrative,
stories of passion, love and loss. Becky seems to me more about the subtlety of
the backstage. Her work is like the setting of the mood, the play of light on
the backdrop. Her pieces are quiet and less apparent than the action on the
stage, but look closer and they help to reveal the hidden magic that works
almost subconsciously in the stories being told.”
Beyond selecting the pieces for the show, Ms. Mason and Mr. McLachlan have
handed over complete authority to Mr. Monet. Given the differences in their
artistry, the pair joked it’s probably best out of their hands.
“[Mr. Monet is] very encouraging to both of us,” Ms. Mason said. “It’s
fascinating that there’s this one gallery that shows both of our works well.”
They said they are looking forward to seeing how the work is presented, though
they have no expectations one way or the other. Unlike a solo show, they said,
setting up a presentation with such vastly different art could be a challenge.
“I think it’s going to be positive,” Ms. Mason added. Cube Gallery is
located at 7 Hamilton Ave. North and is open Wednesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to
5 p.m.,
Thanks EMC for permission to reprint Artist couple in first joint show at Cube next month
by Rosalyn Stevens.
http://www.emcalmontecarletonplace.ca
(off-site link)
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Photo credit:
Rosalyn Stevens
Local artists Becky Mason and Reid McLachlan will have their work featured
together for the first time in a show at Cube Gallery throughout August. The
couple, who have each successfully shown their work for many years, are
intrigued and excited to see how their artistry works together in the gallery.
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PDF of Low Down to Hull in Back newspaper article
Parallel Lives by Phil Jenkins.
From The Low down To Hull and Back, July 29, 2009
“So
that’s what we’re doing here,” Becky Mason says cheerfully, and she claps
her hands. She steps out of her Chelsea home in the woods, walks under the four
cedar strip canoes of various repair slung above the carport, and waves farewell
after an hour of gentle interrogation by me about her art. Now, she is grateful
to be outdoors; Mason prefers skies to ceilings.
Becky
Mason’s hands are very adept at holding a brush or paddle; when the paddle is
in her grip these days, more often than not she is teaching. It’s her summer
job, passing on to many local canoeists and outlying paddlers in a wide radius
the considerable skills her father Bill taught her. Bill Mason was a famous
canoeist and a painter, and an undeniable influence on his daughter in that he
helped her to look at nature with a clear, loving eye.
When
the brush strokes replace the paddle strokes, Becky produces, on creased
Japanese rice paper, delicate, light-filled watercolours that reflect what her
inner eye has seen of natural beauty. A friend, so she tells me, bought the
paper in a fire sale; eight hundred wet but salvageable sheets for $5. The day
is coming soon when the paper will be all used up, a testimony to her years of
productivity.
Absent
from the house at the moment is her husband, Reid McLachlan. He’s still at
work. The two artists met at the High School of Commerce many moons ago and have
led proximitous lives ever since. Reid too works to the Canadian rhythm of many
artists--earn enough in the summer to paint and create a stock of canvases
through the winter; for twenty years, he has worked four months of the year as a
canoe builder and repairer at Trailhead in Ottawa—the owner, Wally Schaber,
is a patron of the arts and we could use many more like him. When he gets home
Reid, who has inherited his mother’s art-gene, will not be long out of his
studio, an outbuilding crammed with finished canvases and art–paraphernalia,
and CDs scattered like leaves and palettes with stalagmites of paint rising up
from them. It’s a room I would chose as the set for a film about an artist
obsessed with getting to the next canvas, to the next discovery. Becky does not
go in there much; she is allergic, in a wince-inducing twist of fate, to
oil-based paints, a physical fact that almost killed her when it manifested
itself.
Becky
and Reid clearly have the tricky art of living together down (there is a
wonderful book by Phyllis Rose called Parallel Lives that analyses the
marriages of twin highly creative people) and it seems to be based on enormous
respect for each other’s work, even as their styles on the canvas are studies
in contrast. In her studio room within the house, Becky thinks gives deep
thought to her next series--it might be mountains, ice storms or canoes or waves
on a shore, currently it’s trees--and then executes them rapidly, almost as
though she is on auto-memory. Reid in his joyous confinement is steadily
outputting portraits of characters from a narrative that we must divine by
looking good and hard into his flesh-tones and grey-blues and then as hard into
ourselves. There is an answer there somewhere; the trick is putting your hands
on it. There are no people in Becky’s works; there are
always people in Reid’s.
Now,
for the first time in all their very productive years together, they are having
a joint show, an event in their joint lives that produces a smile whenever they
mention it. Their home is actually a joint gallery, of course. I couldn’t help
but envy them the ability to decorate your home with wonderful art with your
name on it. Starting at the end of next week, the energetic, innovative Cube
Gallery in Ottawa, down near the colourful Parkdale Market will host the
portentously entitled Indelible Souls. Until September, the walls at Cube
will mimic the walls of the Mason/McLachlan home and testify to inner workings
of these two braided people. Sounds like a cause for celebration to me.
Thanks
to the Low to Hull and Back News for permission to reprint Parallel
Lives by Phil Jenkins.
http://www.lowdownonline.com
(off-site link)
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