Alice and Michael Mason offer a fascinating example of an artistic partnership in which creative practice existed alongside other forms of intellectual and professional inquiry. The Chicago-area couple shared an interest in the visual arts and studied at the Summer School of Painting in Saugatuck, Michigan. Alice Mason was an accomplished painter, etcher, and lithographer whose work frequently drew upon the natural world. Her lithographs transform nature into richly atmospheric compositions of organic forms, negative space, and restrained color. She also taught at the Ox-Bow Summer School of Painting in the 1950s, connecting her practice to an important center for modern and experimental art in the Midwest. Michael Mason's artistic life developed alongside a distinguished career in medicine. Born in Illinois, Mason earned multiple degrees from Northwestern University before becoming a surgeon specializing in the hand. His medical career included pioneering research on tendon healing, teaching at Northwestern, military service in both World Wars, and leadership of the surgical service of the 12th General Hospital during World War II. He was awarded the Legion of Merit in 1945. Yet art remained an important part of his life, and his paintings and prints were exhibited and recognized by institutions and organizations including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Society of American Etchers, and the Society of American Graphic Artists.
These works on paper by the Masons, from WMA’s permanent collection, are particularly compelling when considered together. Rather than simply illustrating the couple's shared life, they reveal two individual approaches to looking and making. Alice's work often transforms observations of landscape and natural forms into atmospheric, abstracted compositions, while Michael moved between landscape, figuration, lithography, and increasingly expressive abstraction. Following a devastating cerebral injury in 1959 that left him unable to use his right side, he continued to paint with his left hand. The resulting works demonstrate the persistence of artistic impulse even under profound physical limitations.The Masons' works also invite a broader consideration of the role of art as a way of seeing. For Alice, the landscape became a source for abstraction and experimentation; for Michael, the disciplined observation of a surgeon and the imaginative freedom of an artist existed side by side. Together, their works suggest that artistic practice need not be separated from the rest of a person’s life, but can be a parallel form of inquiry, a means of observation, memory, discovery, and expression.
