Artworks

Gallery

2o24 (finally fully assembled)

Where to Now?

Acrylic on Linen Banner.

Grampians Spider Orchid. 2022.

Donated as prize at end of year Stawell Orchid Society celebration

Still Life in Blue (2023)

The Gamblers Corner (2023)

Cato (2023) Painting of Canvas Assemblage

Mural completed March 2023

Facing Cato Lake Stawell (Back of the house and Studio on Napier Street)

Advertising Commissions

Artwork posters created for the Stawell Orchid Society in 2024. The project is ongoing.

Works 2019

This series of works was a set of sketches for a submission for a public work…

The black spaces that say “Draw on me” was to be for children to chalk draw on these spaces. The theme was to be on Nature and the stories that come with the bush and animals, and preserving of the bush. The Application was in 2021.

Nature Play Budja Budja Halls Gap 2019.

2023

What is this picture below?

Write a one word answer and

Send it by email

masonchamberlin@lakebankartmusic.com

Remember back in the 1990s It was Wicked to wear overalls tuxedo style I look back now with amusement. And I scratch my head thinking Why??

Mason Chamberlin, 2023.

2023-2024

How does gravity effect the way large sweeping lines are drawn on very large paper?

During the time Mason was afflicted with nerve compression of the neck, previous to surgery, and experiencing paralysis of his left arm, with this he had the feelings of gravity with the muscles of the arm wasting. Here he imagined how gravity effects the drawing of long sweeping lines on 2 meter by 2 meter paper. These are his imaginings (below). The idea that the longer one may draw a line in any direction the more likely the line will begin to curve downward. There is also an idea of resistance that happens when drawing upwards effecting the line in a backward curve relative to the hand drawing the line. This can be thought of as a gravity effect, an interpretation of the geometry enquiries of Isaac Newton in his “Principia”, and also that may be interpreted through String Theory. There is also a well known photo of Albert Einstein with a curved ruler inspiring Mason’s thinking.

Draw force is to Mason the expressing of the long sweeping line and how the relativity of gravity that effects the straightness and fall and the pressure of the artists hand in trying to keep the lines straight.. thus causing a wobble.

2023-2024

Abstraction of Geometries: Triangulating the cube.

These are my musings of renaissance artists and their trying to square the circle or cube the sphere.

Correction….

24/4 = 12/2 proportional to 4d = 4:4 = 1:1(proportional)

12/2 = 6/2 = 4d= 3:3 = 1:1(proportional) and 4×4/8 = 2/1 = 2 = 2:2 = 1:1(proportional)

The 4th dimension to mind is the space within the form. Therefore the 5th dimension may be the outer space… ongoingly infinite additional dimensions are possible, even fractional dimensions are possible too.

Livindi Cafe Summer 2021

This painting is a composition based on the day to day running of Livindi Restaurant in the Stawell main street. Marleen shows my work in her Restaurant and Café.

Cubism study, the “Picasso Nose.”

By Mason Chamberlin, 2024.

I see Pablo Picasso’s famous side on face as how the mind categorically interprets the identifiers of the human face, the psychology of the cubism face suggests mental constructs that show the relativity of the image of the eyes and the seeing of the brain’s psyche.

2023-2024

Cubism study the “Picasso Face”

One can see (below) simplistically the journey Picasso went on from his Hermetic stage, to further and further simplification over time.

A simple thing occurred to me today 1/07/2024.

The Weeping Woman (1937) is a piece of geometry. The reason why it also works as a face (of a woman weeping) is due to the geometry being used in the manner of identifiers that dually work as signifiers too. The work is really a piece of true abstract art, but the tensions between the identifier-signifier duality, keeps my perceptual understanding of what I see back to two elements: the geometric forms that semantically trick me into sensing them as eyes, and the push pull between the identifiers that double up as the woman’s mouth and the abstraction that is the hand. Also my translating mental process of interpretation that decodes as a handkerchief in the hand of the woman. Nothing in this picture is objective. The work is a complete abstraction. Yet, the way the geometry works involves the language parts of the mind-brain tricks us into unfolding the dimensions that are deliberately turned around each other. This work is a serious attempt at understanding how the human face works quantumly, and the push-pull that forces one to mentally organize what is seen. Weeping Woman not only forces me to identify what in normal circumstances would fail to synthesize through normal semiotic processes. This piece of aesthetic geometry is thus making my mind see a woman’s face, albeit illogically, deciphering and re-ciphering in doubletake and further doubletake, putting into order a highly charged emotional interpretation Picasso’s made of his muse: Picasso said “Art is a Weapon”, and art it self appears to me to be Picasso’s muse, and he used it as a weapon! Picasso was more interested in the fallout of civilization resulting from the developments in physics leading up to the Second World War. Which continued beyond the use of the Atom Bomb to end World War II, Which Picasso in ways explored further conflicts, e.g., the Korean War (Massacre in Korea, 1951) and other events that happened during the Cold War (such as the arms race, between 1947 and 1991). He used the language of Cubism to show what weapons could do to the world. It here is a good place to state that the ancient Chinese philosopher and military general, Sun Tzu who wrote how war is an artform (The Art of War). Picasso died 8th of April, 1973 he carried on his antiwar art virtually up to 1969 – 1970 such as, “The War (1969)”. After which his concerns were more about facing death itself.

Continued: 2/7/2024.

The greenness of the face of ‘Weeping Woman (1937) also seems to be a statement about nuclear technology and the effects of radioactivity. Being painted just before the war, it is a prediction of the direction wars would take with the fighting between fascism, communism and democracy. Which Picasso witnessed the lead in to WWII at the outset of the Spanish Civil War. Also Weeping Woman wearing the beret may be a message of Picasso himself painting his muse as Art is a Weapon, as an act of opposition and defiance of war through creativity. Weeping Woman in this way of fighting is still creativity and not destruction. The Face of Weeping Woman seems to be the refractory face of conflict itself. Also, the greenness may symbolize the angst and nausea that is symptomatic of unrelenting conflict. A Conflict and being conflicted. This here is used as a psychological weapon and is counterpoint to “Guernica (1937; Paris World Fair)” Guernica is a painting of monumental proportions. A reduction of conflict down to a kind of theatrical tragicomedy cartoon. This painting seems to say that war is some kind of tragic un-funny joke – taking place in some kind of prison, or a room of torture. “Weeping Woman” however is of the intimate scale and disturbs me through it’s intimacy. The vertical stripes in the background centres a face also inside a kind of prison. A face Rather like the way Amedeo Modigliani refused to paint his portraits with eyes (people trapped inside themselves – a kind of cell that is trauma). This may be as much an omen of his distress of the evil Modigliani witnessed that was played out during the course of the Great War. The weapon Picasso is using here moreover, shows conflict and its frightening absurdity.

The Pain Series (2016 – 2024)

By Mason Chamberlin, 2024.

My current series I am in the process of completing is of paintings that express in a semiotic way my years of physical pain with Ankylosing Spondylitis. A chronic joint condition of my spine that led to cervical nerve compression (a disc between two bones in the neck that grew and fused over pushing into the spinal nerve) with myopathy (progressive death of the spinal nerve because of the over-grown disc pressing into the nerve itself), with acute left arm paralysis that came about around Christmas 2023. Taking chronic pain, to acute and then to need emergency surgery.

The spinal compression was corrected with spinal neurosurgery, an anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (frontal approach, my case an incision on the left side next to the larynx). The neurosurgery team at the Royal Melbourne Hospital on January 30 this year (2024) performed the operation.

The success of the surgery is it has restored movement of my left arm and fingers, resolving the pain that I had and in fixing the paralysis restoring movement to the left arm. Therefore to conclude the series I will need myself to do a painting expressing the surgical success, that is newly good health.

These paintings are quite horrific viewing. They have the essence of the horror genera. Some paintings have been many years of work with adding and subtracting, altering and reworking of colours and composition. The paintings may not be of very commercial value but are important as they express my feelings of a major time and experience of my life.

“The Pain Series” will be launched on this website 1st of July, 2024.

Sorry for the release of the pain series being late. However, here is what I have completed so far.

Released (4th of July, 2024)

Left: Paralysis of the left hand (2024) Oil on canvas. Left-centre: The loss of voice (2024) Oil on canvas. Centre-right: The scream inside (2018). Far-Right: I had eye cancer and then I had cervical disc compressions (2024) Oil on canvas.

A couple of drawings I have just made.

Left: Interior with puppy dog and his toys (2024) graphite on Fabriano per Aquarello hot pressed smooth white 200gsm .

Right: In neurosurgery post operative 30th January 2024 ,(nurse at computer station) (2024) graphite on Fabriano per Aquarello hot pressed smooth white 200gsm.

Two presentation drawings Below.

Left: Culture and Myth (2002): Graphite and white acrylic on Arches Aquarelle 310gsm.

Right: See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil (2024): Graphite on Fabrianno per Aquarello hot pressed smooth white 200gsm paper.