Oil painting by Laurie Mason showing a portrait of Victorian man

Expressions, faces and histories. Lives lived and hard-fought, hidden and forgotten. It is these that I paint. Seeking out the faded snapshots and almost illegible case files of patients of the Victorian ‘Norfolk County Lunatic Asylum’. I transcribe their piercing looks and distracted demeanours, wrinkles and frowns, sadness, desperation and pride, into paint.

Oil Painting by Laurie Mason showing a male child sat in a chair

Producing portraits that such ordinary townsfolk would never have been afforded during their lives. It is only through their regretful circumstances that posterity recorded them at all. 150 years later, I have looked through the hardship, incarceration and shame to the human beneath.

Oil painting by Laurie Mason of Victorian man

Rather than ‘patients’, ‘the unwell’ or ‘the mad’, they are just people like you or I. Attempting to honour their fragmented stories and showcase an interpretation that befits their individuality and dignity is my way of helping dispel the shadow of historic labels and resonate with contemporary experience.

Winner of the Norfolk Contemporary Art Society Prize for Fine Art 2023.

Oil portrait by Laurie Mason of Victorian woman
Oil painting by Laurie Mason of a Victorian woman