2016 Calleen Art Award Winner | Tania Mason

The Calleen Art Award is an acquisitive prize for painting in any subject established in 1977 by Mrs Patricia Fagan OAM. The Calleen Art Award encourages originality, creativity and excellence in the visual arts and is one of the richest art prizes in regional Australia. This year the Gallery received 272 entries from across Australia and 47 works were selected as the finalists by a panel of art professionals. The Awards Judge this year was John Cheeseman, Cultural Services Manager and Gallery Director, Mosman Art Gallery.

Tania Mason, Irregular Plasma

The 2016 winner of the Callen Art Award and $19,000 in prize money was Tania Mason from Sydney for her work Irregular Plasma (2016) a gouache and acrylic painting on canvas. The work connects the biology of the human mind and that of nature. Mason explains, “My son has a mild neurological condition that I have been studying over the years. This is a painting concerned with the chaos and the beauty of his mind. The work title ‘Irregular Plasma’ exemplify’s how fauna is also a surviver, how she has parallel survival instincts just like the human brain, especially when impacted upon. The concepts of this new work explore: neurological patterns within the human brain; the pathway formations within the human mind; natures complex geometric shapes such as vines, plants, trees and leaves. I aim to reveal gentle ways of viewing matter we cannot see and to create imagery that explains riddles within nature.”

Highly Commended awards were presented to Ivan Goodacre for The Dam and Hal Pratt for Hidden Gorge NT, and Commended awards went to Peter Lankas for Helen Street and Rachel Milne for Potters Studio.

Cowra Regional Art Gallery
Until 19 June, 2016
New South Wales

Tania Mason, Irregular Plasma, 2016, gouache and acrylic on canvas, 102 x 84cm
Courtesy the artist and Cowra Regional Art Gallery, New South Wales

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