While Emily Mason and Alice Trumbull Mason approached abstraction through different methodologies, they intersected through their love of nature. Both artists descriptively illustrated bearing witness to natural phenomena in letters, essays, and interviews over many decades. Their connection to landscapes and environmental cycles was a source of lifetime inspiration.
“Yesterday afternoon I heard thunder in the air and went to the studio roof to close the windows. To my surprise, the sky was all blue, except for a gigantic mass of white cumulus. It was glistening, only a few edges were very dark and did strange and mysterious things to the blue between. A kind of NO-COLOR, pure mystery. The shining white made me think of Virginia Woolf’s words about cumulus, “..lawns of celestial pleasure gardens..” I am tantalized as to whether it is the sound of those words that make them so vivid to me, more than the meaning.”
–Alice Trumbull Mason, in a letter to Emily Mason, August 25, 1949
While Trumbull Mason and her family lived in bustling New York City during the late 1930s, she made it a point to leave the urban environment and become immersed in rural life. During the summers between 1938 and 1940, Trumbull Mason brought Emily, her son Jo, and the sculptor Ibram Lassaw to a farm camp in Buck’s county, Pennsylvania. In 1942, Trumbull Mason rented a bungalow near Fishkill, NY, to continue her time with the children and Lassaw in nature. They sowed a victory garden, making ketchup with their homegrown tomatoes. As Mason recalled, it was “better than any ‘store-bought’ brand I ever tasted. The food stamp amount for ketchup was very high.”
“This summer I have been particularly aware of cloud formations, sharp edges against vague masses, folds, subtle changing from one tone to another, all have paraded overhead. Although I never begin a painting with reference to nature or a natural phenomenon, I am constantly nourished by my surroundings, not only clouds but the wind sound with rain, moisture creating ebony tree trunks in the woods. The pleasure is in watching these things change the constant surprise of discovery in familiar places…”
— Emily Mason, August 9th, 1978
Each year beginning in 1968, Emily Mason would make the seasonal shift to living and working in Brattleboro, VT. Surrounded by pastoral views, Mason found endless inspiration in the natural world; shifts of color, lush vegetation, and the life cycles of all living entities.
In a 1972 interview with Karl E. Fortess, when questioned what path she would have taken had she not been a painter, Emily Mason confidently answered, “studying plants.” Interested in botany and horticulture, Mason faithfully tended to her plants in Brattleboro and New York City. In her Flatiron studio, Mason had a dedicated area with numerous flower pots and a greenhouse; located just a few steps from her paintings, she could care for both. In the clip below from 2017, courtesy of RAVA films, Mason speaks about the significance of her relationship with plant life.
Emily Mason in her New York City studio, courtesy of RAVA Films, 2017.