"A girl stood before him in midstream, alone and still, gazing out to sea. She seemed like one whom magic had changed into the likeness of a strange and beautiful seabird. Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a crane's and pure save where an emerald trail of seaweed had fashioned itself as a sign upon the flesh. Her thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were bared almost to the hips, where the white fringes of her drawers were like feathering of soft white down. Her slateblue skirts were kilted boldly about her waist and dovetailed behind her. Her bosom was as a bird's, soft and slight, slight and soft as the breast of some darkplumaged dove. But her long fair hair was girlish: and girlish, and touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, her face.
She was alone and still, gazing out to sea; and when she felt his presence and the worship of his eyes her eyes turned to him in quiet sufferance of his gaze, without shame or wantonness. Long, long she suffered his gaze and then quietly withdrew her eyes from his and bent them towards the stream, gently stirring the water with her foot hither and thither. The first faint noise of gently moving water broke the silence, low and faint and whispering, faint as the bells of sleep; hither and thither, hither and thither; and a faint flame trembled on her cheek.
— Heavenly God! cried Stephen's soul, in an outburst of profane joy.”

James Joyce. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

Born 1978

Jennifer lives and works inTāmaki Makaurau.

Jennifer Mason draws inspiration for her practice from the depiction of the female nude in art history. The paintings are delicate and refined technically using traditional painting techniques and processes. The works are both concerned with compositional and painterly techniques that place emphasis on the body as a lived experience as well as being concerned with ideas about beauty. Her current area of interest is the depiction of Mary Magdalene and the legend of her time spent in Southern France.

Jennifer Mason studied at Glasgow School of Art (2015), SUNY (2004), completed a Post Grad Diploma at Elam (2013) and holds a BA in Women's Studies (2004) from the University of Auckland. She collaborated with the New Music Ensemble Orchestra for a live performance at the Assembly Hall in Glasgow 2015, Had a solo exhibition 'Borborygumus' in the Mezzanine at ArtSpace 2014, and was the recipient of Annual Fine Arts Commission for the Festival of Photography in 2013.