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Sophie Mason is an artist and gardener exploring our relationship with the natural world.

Landscape (London, Autumn)

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E N V I R O N M E N T A L
C A R E

David Attenborough said ‘No one will protect what they don't care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced.’ The definition of care is two fold:
1. feel concern or interest; attach importance to something. 2. look after and provide for the needs of something or someone.
I like this word. Care.
The first point is akin to love. How do we love the natural world? Where do we find intimacy with the other than human people around us? What gives us joy? And within this, where in our lives could we deepen this connection?

The second point speaks to the responsibility that comes with that love. What can we do, within our often too full lives to make real, important change? Change that moves us towards lasting, system wide protection for that which we love. How do we unpick the overwhelm, handle the grief, own up to the lethargy and denial so we can better know what action to take? How do we do all this whilst being kind to ourselves and those around us? Staying in a mindset of positive action at whatever level we are capable of in each moment?

Big questions!
With many, many answers. Certainly though, tending to the first point ensures more strength for the second. Taking time to root ourselves in that which we love will give us nourishment, courage and insight around what is required to live up to our responsibilities. With excitement and passion rather than obligation.
I think its important to hold an awareness that, within the madness of it all, what we are really being asked to do by this great, old, rumbling world is to move towards more and more love, more and more care, for every human and non human person around us. Which honestly just makes me shiver with delight!

These photos are just a few ways that we are loving the natural world atm.
What about you?
Would like to do another post on responsibility as it’s big and juicy and confusing and I would like to engage with it on this platform. Actually - it’s because I feel a responsibility to use this platform, which I find terrifying! Face the fear and all that! #environmentalcare #care #loveandresponsibility #environment #nature #environmentalism

Two things that really matter.
#homegrowntomatoes #tomatopickingtoddlers

Details from my recent solo show Blanket along with the blurb below.
Mason’s recent work involves dyeing large rolls of canvas with plants from the local area. Then, over a period of many months, using the fabric of the canvas as an intermediary for ritualised action within the local, natural environment.

Washing it in the sea, burying it in sand and soil, tying it to trees, rubbing herbs, ash and coal into it. She uses materials from the immediate surroundings to dictate the canvas’s patina, without attachment to the outcome. The residual build up of stains that occur through these actions creates a map of time, land, care and the physical body on the blanket.

In exhibiting the work she plays with the Blankets, returning them to a canvas. Cutting and stretching small fragments of the cloth onto bars, curating its evolvement into a hung painting; allowing parts of the fabric to limply hang as a simple blanket or at other times manipulating its form into something altogether different.

In this work Mason explores the significance that can be accumulated through time, wear and affection. Those innumerable, minutiae imprints we leave upon another, a place or an object and, in turn, they upon us.
Just as a well loved object deteriorates with lifelong love, these works hope to exhibit the residue of care built up over months of actions between artist and environment.
#blanket #art #landscape #portrait #sophiemason

GOSSIP opens tonight at Take Courage Gallery in New Cross, London.
6-10pm tonight and tomorrow in conversation with an amazing line up between 12-3 pm. See photos for details of each day.
@louisehildrethart @elizabethroselangford @sigridholmwood @freyagabie @jessica.akerman @enyalachmancurl @earthworks_ldn @loonhoward @charlotterosborne #kolefulmine
@thetakecouragegalleryofficial