Several people have commented lately on how similar my photos are to my paintings. Which influences the other?
I think of some photos I took at the Baer Art Center artist residency in Iceland this past July. I was sitting on a grassy hill right on the edge of the fiord. My camera somehow ended up in the grass beside me and I happened to take a photo while it rested there. When I saw what I'd taken, I took about 80 more shots! The colours in the grasses were violet, pink, lavender, yellow and green. It was dizzying. I felt like I had opened a door into a wonderland, where the blades of grass were huge and indistinct. But most interestingly, they were transparent, overlapping each other.
Recently, I taught a Cold Wax and Oil painting workshop in Anchorage, Alaska. At the end of the workshop, a friend and I took a Glacier Cruise on Prince William Sound out of Whittier, south of Anchorage. At the end of the voyage, we came up close to Surprise Glacier, where I saw chunks of ice floating in the water, that our catamaran slid over. I looked down, saw the depth of the ice below the surface, the light in the dark water, and began taking photos.
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Gathering Light 28 60x60" Oil on canvas © 2015 Janice Mason Steeves |