JEAN MASON

Broken, But Beautifull

Opening Reception: September 13, 2025

Bruno David is pleased to present Broken, but Beautiful, an exhibition by artist Jean Mason. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.

On May 16, 2025, an EF3 tornado tore through the area right outside of Bruno David Gallery, doing tremendous damage all over St. Louis. It killed several people and changed the lives of thousands. Few places were hit as hard as Forest Park.

Jean Mason spent May 17th and 18th walking all around and through Forest Park, amazed to see the impact the tornado had on hundreds of mature trees. Mason was taken by how beautiful were many of the downed, torn apart, or severely damaged trees. Their once majestic stance had been devastated but much of their majesty remained, even as they lay on the ground, in pieces.

In several of the settings, Mason saw scenes of ruined trees that seemed to portray something entirely different. One was a reddish-brown horse charging ahead, another a wounded soldier at rest against a downed giant, another the inside of a wooden telescope looking at a distant sky, and another a huge hand grasping an eye.

Jean Mason hopes you will find the images in Broken, but Beautiful to be as visually stimulating as he did and that you will ponder the invisible forces that had the power to bring down these massive trees, which had sprouted, literally, from a seed barley larger than the head of a pin. During their years of growth, well over a century in many instances, a gentle wind swayed their branches and rustled their leaves, but on May 16, 2025 that wind turned into a monster that destroyed what it had caressed for so many years.

As Jean Mason observes, “Such is the power and unpredictable force we call Mother Nature.”

Jean Mason, a native of Saint Louis, was born in 1946 and has immersed himself in the art of photography for over 60 years. Mason’s extensive experience with motion picture cameras primarily occurred in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, where he focused on sports photography, significantly influencing the way sporting events are televised today.