“Look, dear ones, this is the difference a bit of
cadmium yellow can make,” says Frank Mason as he shows his 25
landscape-painting students how to create magic on canvas. Holding a
fine-tipped, number five sable brush in his steady right hand, he dabs at a
student’s painting and, in a few deft strokes, begins to transform it from
muddy to miraculous. “See how that makes the tree come forward; how it pops
out? Now it’s richer! Lighter!”
Like a general addressing his troops, Mason turns to
the semicircle of hushed students and explains, “Whistler thought a painting
should make a big statement. That’s what we’re after here.” Then with a
hearty laugh that bubbles up from deep within his 6’3” frame, he splashes on “a
slop” of purple paint to the foreground of the Vermont mountain scene and
carefully, expertly, works it in. Delighted with the transformation, he leans
his head back, waves his arms in the air and bellows, “FAN-TAS-TIC, no?
IN-CRED-IBLE, yes? Now we’re getting somewhere!”...