Marceline Mason’s “Lumen Naturae”
M Contemporary
205 E 9 Mile Road
Ferndale
Feb. 21, 2026
Transfixed in a dreamlike state while wandering in the woods.
Sleepwalking through a fog in an endless sleepy suburban landscape.
A surreal hallucination while following a flowing river to … who knows.
That’s how it feels stepping into “Lumen Naturae,” Marceline Mason’s excellent new show at M Contemporary art gallery in Ferndale.
It marks Mason’s full arrival as one of the most compelling young painters working in Detroit today. Each one of her enchanting oil painting landscapes is doused in style for days, with so much depth that you can step inside of them and willingly get lost.
It’s no wonder this show was staged at M Contemporary, where owner Melannie Chard has become a de facto selector of “who’s next up.”
“It’s very atmospheric. It can feel like a memory, too,” says Chard. “She’s loose with her brush strokes, so everything feels very soft around the edges when you get close to her paintings.”
“Lumen Naturae,” or “light of nature,” is a light that doesn’t mimic the sun. It’s a light from within; a glowing, unnatural source of light that Mason uses to guide her paintings. To the viewer, it’s easy to see everything as bathed in moonlight. It’s a trippy, distant feeling that somehow still feels welcoming, like the epic scale and rushing water of “Flight” (featured above).
In Mason’s work, things feel familiar yet strange or just a bit off, which is where “dreamlike” could be attached to every single one of these works. “Chicory in the Night Rapids” captures this idea perfectly, as Chicory normally only blossoms in the sun but here is radiant after dark.
So, are these landscapes all a state of mind for Mason? Or do they mimic actual places from her present and past?
“The work begins with a meditative intake of my immediate landscape in Detroit, balanced by the memory of immersive sites in Appalachia, such as the Youghiogheny River, which uniquely runs north,” Mason explained during an interview with M Contemporary’s Chard.
One of my favorite pieces is “Temenos,” with its crooked branches and Mason’s painstaking care of each flower, set against a hazy backdrop of glowing lights from suburban homes in the background. It immediately summons the feeling of getting home after the lights turn on; of finding a piece of nature and escape -- of privacy -- in the uniform tract housing of metro Detroit’s sprawling suburbia.
Major kudos for including the flaming “Lumen Novum,” which brings a blaze of color to Mason’s deeply blue and nocturnal color palette for this show.
There’s no doubt that Marceline Mason’s “Lumen Naturae” will rank among my favorite gallery shows of the year, a truly affecting trip into a unique painter’s dreamlike landscapes that stuck with me for days after seeing it in person. Y It’s on display now through March 14 at M Contemporary in Ferndale.
