Most known for her vivid and passionate musicians, Jean Mason's oil paintings feel like kinetic energy on canvas. 

Music is the fuel that ignites her paintings. It's almost as important as the canvas and the paint.  Her work often relates to words from songs, things she reads or stories she hears. There are  notes and scraps of paper pasted all over the  studio - paintings in the simmering stage, before any brush stroke has appeared.  She writes those inspirations around the outside edges of the finished paintings.  There's always more to the story.

She works quickly with intense focus. Jean usually works on paintings in series or groupings, many times working on 30 or more canvases at a time.  Time has no meaning when the paint is flying.  She's happiest when she has a brush in each hand and paint in her hair.  Chaos equals creativity.

Her paintings have captured the attention of the music industry where they can be seen on CD covers, T-shirts, festival posters, and billboards.  She has a following literally all over the globe. Sometimes the articles create a challenge in the verbal translation - but the visual translation is universal.

Ask her where she’s from and she’ll tell you "everywhere."  She was born in Japan and lived all over the United States. Her father was an Air Force officer, which meant that her family moved every few years. Her mother was an oil painter, showing work at galleries in New Mexico and Colorado. As a child, Jean  remembers loving the smell of linseed oil and listening to artists critique the work.

She began formal art lessons at age 12. She showed work through the private art school and made her first real sale before she was officially a teenager. In high school and college and she developed an interest in theater design, painting huge backdrops for local theater companies. Jean graduated  from University of Kansas with degrees in studio art and art education.     

Her studio is in Carter Lake Iowa, which blends with downtown Omaha. The lake is surrounded by Omaha on 3 sides and sits across from the local airport...a perfect place for  she and her husband who are now empty-nesters and travel frequently. 

Jean teaches classes at the Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha Creative Institute and WhyArts Inc. She is involved in community fundraisers, art awareness programs and public art projects.  

Oh, and her newest passion is the make people happy machine, .Art-O-Mat,  blocks of art in refurbished cigarette machines for a $5.  Find them in all over the world - even the Snithsonian.