We caught up with the brilliant and insightful M. Mason a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, M. thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I have always been inclined to use my hands. My father is a carpenter, and the name “Mason’ refers to “a builder or worker in stone”. I think my love for creating started there. I didn’t go to an art school, so I learned most of what I know from experimenting with my hands, and different mediums. I used crayons, spray paint, pens, pencils, whatever I could get my hands on. I just knew I wanted to create something. For a long time, I felt pressured to leave art on the back burner and just treat it like a hobby. Because of this, I didn’t put as much time into my craft as I should have. Maybe it was pressure from a fast-paced capitalist society, maybe it was family, maybe it was a combination of both. But I didn’t bet on myself for a really long time, and that prevented me from really learning and honing in on my craft. Recently, life has pushed me to fall back in love with my inner child and to put my energy into creating pieces that can stand the test of time. Using whatever resources I had around me was an important skill I had to learn, which is why texture and flirting with different mediums is so important to me. I didn’t have a mentor or teacher to really guide me through the process of becoming a skilled artist, so I had to learn through trial and error. I had to let go of my pride and learn how to adapt to the world and feelings around me.

M., love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Mason, and I am a 22-year-old visual artist based in Dallas, Texas. I am currently a fashion intern attending UTA, and I have been creating art since 2018. I am a painter by trade, but also incorporate fashion and sustainability into my artwork. My artwork explores vulnerability and examines the relationship between the diary and the canvas. For my Pandemic Summer series, I let my words play as the background and skeleton for the artwork and used my hands as opposed to paintbrushes to bring my vision to life. By skipping paint brushes and using my hands, I hope to create a sense of vulnerability and intimacy between the canvas, my subconscious, and the audience. As a self-taught painter, I hope to explore my identity as a black person from the South using the resources around me and convey that hope and introspection to the world. Fashion is another vessel that I love to use for self-expression and impacting the world, and through my work as a fashion archivist and stylist I love to marry my two worlds together through art. I was blessed with very good taste and a big imagination, so fortunately clients can trust me put together stories with their closets, and do whatever research necessary to find the perfect bag to complete a vision. Social Media, despite its shortcomings, has been a great way for me to harness this skill and share with the world the many beautiful ways to express one’s self visually. I like to show the world that there’s power in self expression, whether you’re using a paint brush or a pair of Manolo Blahniks.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I think that there is so much unharnessed talent in the South, and I hate how there’s such a lack of resources despite. I hope that in the future I can change this, because having the space to tools to create is such an essential part of being an artist. Art and Fashion are two industry that heavily affected with nepotism and divisions in class. The lack of resources for minorities and queer youth in the South is what keeps a lot of people from breaking that glass ceiling. While funding the sciences is important, funding the arts is just as impactful, and I hate that in the South there’s a push towards STEM and trade schools versus the Arts. While the issue impacts our society as a whole, this is a topic that directly affects people in my environment, so I’m hoping I can be the change that I want to see in the future.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Like most people, the pandemic forced me to take a pause from capitalism and get to know myself again. I had always loved to paint and create, but I shied away from it because I already had an idea of the person I should be and what I should do. Join a sorority, become a lawyer, get married, make everyone proud, in that order. I come from a long line of Southern belles, so my future was pretty set in stone. Of course, Covid changed everything, and I went through a transition that somehow brought me back to who I was from the start. I found myself again through painting in my apartment while the world around me changed, and I along with it. I went through grief, friendship changes, relationship changes, family changes and through it all I learned that I’ve been overcomplicating things this entire time. I’ve never been keen on rules, so sorority president was never in the cards. I’ve always wanted to bring the pictures in my head to life through the canvas, so law school would really be a waste of money. Men bore me to death, so marrying one is just unnecessary paperwork. I know what I want out of life, and who I am. I’m thankful for the time I had to find myself again, and ever since I’ve been focusing on my crafts, life has been worthwhile again. I’m only getting better.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @therisinggemini
• Twitter: @therisinggemini
• Youtube: @therisingpisces
• Other: TikTok: @therisingpisces

Image Credits

photos shot by Christian Harper
Instagram: @shotbysolace