Artist Interviews 2025

Mason Owens  
By Johnny Otto



How did you first get interested in painting with egg tempera?

I was first introduced to egg tempera by Pat Witt, a wonderful artist and teacher whom I studied under when I was a teenager. However, I think it was all the quirks and preferences I picked up while working different jobs in my 20s that made egg tempera seem right for me. I have an aversion to acrylic and latex paint from my time as a house painter and seeing so much of it washed down drains. Similarly the fumes from oil paint thinners reminds me of spraying in tiny rooms and wearing a respirator for hours. I also worked as a scenic artist painting movie sets and became a bit obsessed with the surface qualities of different mediums and additives, finding many of them to have a sort of artificial cheapness that I see so often in new construction homes. In between these different jobs I always returned to working as a gardener where I gained a real reverence for natural materials and fresh air. When I tried using egg tempera again a few years ago, I felt like it was a perfect culmination of my interests. It’s an entirely natural medium, I could use it safely in my tiny apartment, it’s not expensive, it’s compostable, and as a bonus it creates beautifully unique surface qualities.



What do you enjoy most about painting rural landscapes and quiet interiors?

I feel like my life is split between the domestic moments of my everyday life within my apartment and the places I travel to in an effort to escape that normalcy. It’s a balancing act to feel content and engaged in my normal life, and it’s something I am continually failing at. I decorate my spaces, romanticize them, and try to enjoy the comfort and familiarity they bring. At the same time I am always looking to escape, and feel some little bit of adventure and experience something outside of myself. This tension is where I find a lot of the inspiration for my work. The landscapes I paint are often inspired by travels and a need to celebrate and cherish those moments of adventure, likewise the interiors are a more intimate version of that same sentiment, but turned inward to try to appreciate my immediate everyday existence.



How does your work as a gardener influence your art?

Gardening and farming has connected me with a wonderful rural community that I continually return to to find inspiration. But beyond literal subject matter I think working with nature has affected where I see value in my life. Time spent outside with friends, cooking homegrown meals together, or taking pilgrimages to our favorite farms are things that rejuvenate me and made me want to start painting again. Looking back, gardening introduced me to a far more magical life.



Many of your paintings seem to capture small shifts in light or time—what draws you to those subtle moments?

Often I’m painting spaces I am very familiar with and I have been present in them to see how the light changes over the course of a day, season, or year. The subtle differences in how the room feels in different light is something I am always surprised by and look forward to experiencing daily. I feel like so much of my life, and I imagine everyone else's, is spent in small domestic spaces and I guess I feel the need to romanticize them.



Do you paint directly from observation, or mostly from memory?

I never paint from observation. Usually I will snap a few pictures on my phone to act as placeholders of memorable experiences. Then a few weeks or months later while looking through my old photos, those images will spark the memory of that moment and I’ll write it down as a possible painting idea. After that I generally work mostly from my imagination, I might pull specific objects or colors from the photos or my memory but the majority of the paintings are figured out through trial and error on the panel’s surface.



How do you want viewers to feel when they spend time with your work?

While painting, I am often thinking of the friends or family that know the specific places or moments I am depicting. I add things that I know they will recognize and understand, almost like an inside joke. I hope viewers feel like they are in on the joke. That despite everything being rather specific to my life, they are able to see a reflection of their own places, objects and memories.



What role does slowness or patience play in your painting process?

Egg tempera is inherently a slow medium. I add a thin layer and then watch it dry, and judge whether those new marks helped or not. Often I add the next layer to try to fix what I just messed up. It’s a very trial and error based process that repeats hundreds or thousands of times in each piece. It’s a process that requires patience, but is rewarding because I believe it weeds out dishonesty and contrived decisions.



What are you looking forward to in the future?

I’m excited for the seasons to change and to spend time with friends and family. I also just started taking horseback riding lessons at a farm outside Baltimore and look forward to doing that more.