Alden Mason

Mar 6

Burpee Garden Revisited

March 6 - 28, 2008

Opening Reception: “First Thursday,” March 6, 6-8pm

In 1973, following the spectacular success of his first exhibition of the Burpee Garden Series paintings at Seattle’s Polly Friedlander Gallery, Alden Mason visited New York at the invitation of Chuck Close. Close, a former student of Mason, allowed him to install a number of his Burpee Garden Series paintings in Close’s SoHo studio in the hopes of finding a dealer in NY. In particular, Close arranged for the maverick art dealer Alan Stone to view Mason’s work.

On viewing the group of paintings Mason had installed in Close’s studio, Stone agreed to buy all of the paintings and to represent Mason’s work in New York. The two paintings illustrated here are among those works Stone acquired and held on to for the last nearly 35 years. We are pleased to present them for the first time in Seattle.

Allan Stone showed Mason’s paintings through the late 1970s, finding an international market for the work. Some of the Burpee Garden paintings were also shown to great acclaim at Ruth Schaffner Gallery in Los Angeles. Paintings from the series are represented in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Denver Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Tacoma Art Museum and the Museum of Northwest Art in La Conner, WA.

The Burpee Garden Series of oil paintings were the first of many triumphant innovations in paintings as his career progressed. They remain the pinnacle of early success of this remarkable artist of the Northwest. The series is named after the Burpee seed catalog which Mason remembered from his early years growing up on a farm in the Skagit Valley. He went on to attend the University of Washington, initially in entomology but graduating with a painting degree in 1947. Mason taught painting at the Art School of the University of Washington from 1949 - 1981.

Mason was later represented in New York by Charles Cowles Gallery, former curator at the Seattle Art Museum. Mason was represented by the Greg Kucera Gallery from 1983 to 1996. Foster/White Gallery has represented Mason since 2003 and currently has a show of recent work. We are pleased to work with Foster/White Gallery in presenting a broad range of Alden Mason’s work in these two concurrent exhibitions.