Gareth Mason: Flights of Fancy

As opposed to Dream, over which we claim little conscious control, or Reverie, a more leisurely state to be dwelt within, Fancy sits squarely in the realm of the active imagination, where it can be directed, embellished and mindfully indulged. When it comes to envisioning the possible, Fancy has the edge over Dream and Reverie for me. It allows more agency: more pluck, more potential for purposeful invention.

My work is riddled with Fancy. It drives all of my “what if...?” moments, often forming a bridge between doubt and action. Fancy pushes at action’s rule book, liberating small taboos. It renders skill malleable, enabling ‘anti-craft’ moments and the kind of friction that can create breaches in the levees of belief. Ensuring that the breaches are productive, and not just anarchic spasms, is the role of reflection.

Fancy and experience are not binary. They have an interdependence that is mutually fruitful. The business of the hand is a bridge to ideas in a manner that theory has difficulty grasping. This is how Fancy’s physical incarnation can take the lead, directing how ideas and responses unfold. The unbridled moment must be allowed its place, tempered by, or enfolded within, composition.

Fancy inoculates me against material complacency. The materials themselves become fickle springboards, augmenting my own perceiving, my own understanding, my own sense of the possible. So, Fancy moves from the mind and into the hand, where it can be put to mischievous and possibly revelatory work.

Flights of Fancy may seem whimsical, and there is always room for whimsy, but in truth, they are serious agents of transport. Transport needs a place to land, and this is where the pot still holds its ground for me.

Gareth Mason

September 2026