A lifetime spent making images
John N Mason has been making images professionally for more than six decades. Trained at Chelsea School of Art in London, he came to Australia in 1967 and built a career as a graphic designer and illustrator, working on major commercial and advertising projects.
Today, he paints for himself.
Marine Paintings – Great Barrier Reef
An imagined Great Barrier Reef
John’s best-known contemporary work is his Marine Series — a vivid, imagined world beneath the
surface of the Great Barrier Reef.
Turtles, reef sharks, manta rays, tropical fish, marlin, grottoes and shipwrecks inhabit these paintings.
The creatures are based on careful observation and study; the environments and encounters are largely
the product of John’s imagination.
Years spent sailing, fishing and snorkelling around the Whitsundays gave him a direct familiarity with
the colour, movement and atmosphere of Australia’s underwater world.
He is not attempting to reproduce a photograph of a particular reef.
He is creating a reef that could exist
THE PAINTINGS
John works primarily in acrylic, combining traditional brushwork with palette-knife techniques and
airbrush where appropriate.
His marine paintings often begin with small studies. Individual creatures are explored first — their
anatomy, colour, form and movement — before they become part of a larger imagined composition.
This approach allows the paintings to remain visually convincing while giving John the freedom to
construct scenes that could never have been photographed.
Alongside the marine work, he continues to explore landscapes, still life, drawing and abstraction.
A LIFE IN IMAGES
There has never really been a time when John wasn’t drawing, designing or painting.
His professional career began with formal art training and developed through commercial illustration
and graphic design. His later return to fine art is therefore less a change of direction than a return to
something that was always there.
As John puts it:
“Any day that I don’t paint or draw something feels like a wasted day.”
That remains a useful description of the way he approaches his work.
ORIGINAL PAINTINGS & FINE-ART PRINTS
Selected original paintings are available through the website.
Many works from the Marine Series are also available as high-quality fine-art prints, including stretched
canvas and unframed formats.
FROM COMMERCIAL ART TO FINE ART
Before turning his attention increasingly towards fine art, John spent much of his working life solving
visual problems for other people.
His design career included work associated with companies and brands including Coca-Cola Bottlers,
Procter & Gamble Australia, J.I. Case International, and Dunlop Slazenger.
His studio became a substantial Below-the-Line advertising operation, producing printed and illustrated
material for major clients.
That commercial background matters.
It taught him to think about composition, hierarchy, colour, visual communication and — perhaps most
importantly — how to make an image work.
Those skills are now applied without a client’s brief.
EXPLORE THE MARINE SERIES | VIEW ORIGINAL PAINTINGS | SHOP ART PRINTS