In the second millennium, the work of Antonella Mason grew through consequential cycles elaborated in close relationship with her own experience. The representations of her paintings therefore reflect subjective existential realities, and it is therefore from the reasoning that the image is generated, without any contribution to vain reveries. (From retrospective monograph by Elsa Dezuanni “1996 2017 Antonella Mason”, June 2018.)

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Antonella Mason tells us about the relationship between conscious and unconscious visualized through a conceptual project originated from a profound reflection, but expressed at the same time with immediate exactness: a path of study and action, apparently cryptic, in which discipline and impulse, dedication and contemporary allegory are summed up. (Trieste, May 2018)

I believe there are always two conversations at once that Antonella Mason helps me understand through her art.  The first conversation is between that part of our minds/brains of which we are aware, for which we have words.  This is where the conscious “I” lives and where psychologists say we develop a Theory-of-Mind that lets us see the world from the perspective of the intentions of others.  The second conversation is between our unconscious minds/brains. This one is richly impacted by direct experience in a specific context. It adds a dimension of understanding of each other through non-verbal cues such as the tone of voce or body posture. Ms. Mason’s art, enhanced in my lucky case by talking with her, teaches me and helps me sort out what is important in my own thinking about this topic and how to apply it to my work in higher education. (January 2017)

… in all of her paintings there is an “I, the narrator”, with a density of content that could easily escape the unprepared viewer. Purposely unfettered by stylistic canons and rules, and conscious of the need to be “as one is, in order to create”, she expresses herself autonomously from one painting to another, generating consistencies that could be read like the chapters of a novel. In that self-expression – with the oratorical emphasis of a “passionate artist, Italian, romantic, dramatic” (as she defines herself, and she is in fact so) – further clarifications can be revealed regarding the meaning of her works. (Ennio Pouchard’s complete critique on “From becoming to Vertically”,  Antonella Mason’s monograph, Antiga Ed. November 2016.)

Antonella Mason uses the weapons of rhetoric, backing them up with the poignant arms of painting, of which she knows all the tricks of the trade. She delights in the persuasion of her onlookers, drawing them in with her lively hues, capable of concealing darker emotional folds, charming them with a vertical charge that alternately drives the gaze upwards and downwards, relentlessly seeking out a point at which to pause for thought.It tries to make a deal with those who look: those who seduce but don’t impose; those who invite but don’t indicate. After familiarising oneself with the various styles or languages found in her way of working, the onlooker starts to recognise a number of recurrent themes. Yet the use of colour – intense, brazenly fearless – goes beyond such formalisms: it stays strong both in her figurative and more abstract creations. A colour that speaks, sings, resounds…and at times cries out and turns red. (From catalogue critique by Chiara Casarin, exhibition “Two Out of a Thousand” -Spazio Open Treviso September 8/21, 2014-.)

Antonella Mason is compelled to the human subject. Across a range of resolutions (from the brushy expressionistic to the earnestly illusionistic) glinting eyes stare heavenward, into the distance or straight out at the spectator. These works are at once a tribute to their multiple, often anonymous subjects as to the painting process itself. (2009)

Antonella’s work evokes a passionate, volcanic affair. Each emboldened stroke speaks of a woman vibrant in gesture and thought. Her work speaks of a place more than a moment in time, the only way for me to literalize it would be call her “Espressioni di Italianismo.” A expression of cultural output through a wide ranging subject. While remaining faithful to her subject she imposes an enchanted grasp that enlivens the viewer. A bold, direct and dynamic approach to painterliness combined with a soft, sincere introspection that draws you into her soul’s honest display. What is never in question is the beauty of the whole in any of her pieces, what surprises and delights is that moment of gestural pause, that one point where the painting impresses on you its internal world. (2008)

The painting of Antonella Mason is the sense of the travel within the man. Search in order to understand, to know without judging and, in order to make this with greater availability, to even undress the self of a share of the own tradition, to critically review the own roots. The artist plays with the contradiction of the world that is outside and is within, between what we think ours and what we think other’s. These faces unmask our removals, invert the role that wants us watching and not show. The creation of an artist is far away from the exhaustive being. We have thought more times seeing her Art, metaphorically with a poet to us beloved like S.T. Coleridge: “There is in every human countenance either a history or a prophecy, which must sudden, or at least soften, every reflecting observer”. [S.T. Coleridge, Additional Table Talk] (2002)

Antonella Mason’s images grasp our attention as we enter her personal dialogue with the complexities of the human spirit.With gestural brushstrokes she expresses an acute sensitivity to her subject and captures a range of intense moods – from fierce anger to macabre and misterious — but always engaging. (2001)

Antonella Mason looks for the essence of soul. She wants to seize the inner nature of man, to go deep into all the aspects, even the most paintful ones, of human soul. Thus, she is near – in a broad sense – to the great current of Expressionism and, in a way, To the art of the German “ Neue Wilden”. Therefore, there are no affectation, no sophistication, no homage to fashion in her works. Truth, first of all, is what matters. (1996)

Portraits of women and children, young people of an even aggressive realism, founded however as well as on the physical likeness as on the amazing capability to”visualize” the x-ray of the soul. (1996)

Mason ‘s paintings distinguishes itself for a figurative value even if it gets to an interpretation from which emerges the relation towards inconcious and memory.The Art of A. Mason is painting that turns in phylosophy of an emotional mood: the one wringed out in a unrepeatable unique moment. (1995)