New Artist Display at the Liberty

DAYTON - Paintings by Martha Mason will be on display at the Liberty Theater through the month of February. Mason taught two-dimensional studio classes at Walla Walla Univer­sity from 1995 to 2013. In 2006 she and her husband, Jerry, moved to Dayton, Wash. They find the community to be very warm and they prize the sense of culture, history and idealism they find here.

Mason was born in Redlands, Calif. She took summer art classes in Sacramento and got hooked on art. Her formal training took place in several schools including UCLA and the University of Illinois where she received BFA and MFA degrees. Mason focuses on figure work and still life studies. "I tend to work on these more or less continuously; I'm always drawing. My style has evolved through abstract to tight realism to gesture and collage," she said. The still life work is often shoes or clothing. The current show represents recent "favor­ite" pieces in acrylic and mixed media, one oil study on paper and a charcoal drawing. "This is my best work so far," she said.

Mason now works in her home studio and is represented by Broderick Gallery in Longview.