Janice Mason Steeves

Lessons on Art and Life from Dog Obedience Class

2012-01-30T13:35:00.000-08:00

This is Hue. He's 4 months old now. He looks like such an angel here. We've been to two obedience classes. On Day One, the trainer gave us a few doggie obedience tips. Seems to me these could also be applied to art and to life.

Don't take it personally: I ask him to sit and he does for a second. Then I gently pull his leash up and push his bum down to sit again. And I do this again. And I do it again and again.
He puts his front two feet onto the table by the back door. I push him off. He does it again and again and again as he waits for me to put on my coat to go outside. And again. As I put on my coat, he tries to bite the bottom edge of the jacket. I take my outdoor shoes out of the closet, put them on the floor and he quickly grabs one and runs away with it. I call him back. He comes. I take the shoes away and put them on one at a time. I bend over to put his leash on. He bites my scarf and gets his teeth caught in the fabric. Oh I sound like such a patient saint, when the truth is much different and by the time we get out the door, I'm yelling and hollering and completely fried. Meanwhile he's so happy to be outdoors.

How many times have I submitted work to juried shows, to galleries, or for grants, where I've been turned down. At the beginning, I was hurt, frustrated and greatly discouraged by the rejections. Not that I have a thick skin now, but the discouragement doesn't last. I'm committed to making art, no matter if anyone likes it. One of the biggest lessons is: don't take it personally.

Be Patient: Make him sit again and again. When he does finally sit for longer than 1 second, I say "Good Dog", through gritted teeth by the 50th go round.

Most often, I'm more patient with my work. I've certainly put in my 10,000 hours.

Don't get frustrated or angry, the dog won't respect you: Well, I have to laugh at this one. I have a long way to go here.

I have had to learn this in my work too. This has been a difficult lesson for me. A number of years ago I created a body of work that was very experimental for a show I was having in Toronto. The work was very poorly received, poorly attended, and nothing sold. I had had quite a lot of success with my work until then. And that response completely overwhelmed and discouraged me. In anger, I decided to quit painting for a year. Very mature response. My galleries thought it was a good idea that I was going to take a year off. What? I thought they would miss me or advise me not to do this. Nope.

I did end up taking 7 months off. It turned out to be a good break, but a financial disaster. It took me years to recover financially from that time off. At this point, that even though I still get frustrated and angry occasionally, I know I won't quit again. Whatever happens.

The dog lives in the moment: I tend to daydream on walks. Not Hue. He is forever alert. He must be a Buddhist. He is interested in every single thing around him, running from one side of the path to another. And I have to be just as alert when I'm training him, partly so I won't trip on the leash when he whips around me or spins me! He's keeping me in the moment too.

Synge's Chair 24x24" oil/cold wax medium on panel
©Janice Mason Steeves

I also know that when he finally falls asleep in my studio, when I'm working, that I had better make good use of those few hours. I'd better focus. No leaving the studio to put in another load of laundry or to quickly check emails. Focus. Normally I wouldn't bother to get my paints set up if I only have an hour or two to work. Now I jump in there and use every moment, hoping that I won't step back in a moment of reverie, into a puddle of pee.

Today is dog obedience class #3.

Enough Time

2012-01-08T07:47:00.000-08:00

“It is not enough if you are busy.
The question is, ‘what are you busy about?’”
~Henry David Thoreau

How can one person do it all? I have taken classes on getting organized. I set schedules and goals. I have no TV. But I feel that I'm constantly playing catch-up in my life: finding enough studio time, trying to catch-up on my art inventory, organizing my art classes, writing grant proposals, meeting art exhibition deadlines, donating to art auctions, writing blog posts, aiming to keep up on facebook, as well as walking my puppy, exercising, housecleaning and family life. And occasionally meditating.

I was brought abruptly to my senses last night though when a dear old friend called to chat. We talk now and again but not regularly. We've known each other since our now grown children were in Grade One. In the spring, she told me she was having very serious worries about one of her children who had recently confessed to having a drug addiction. We talked for a long time.

And then days began to pass. My busy, often chaotic life took all my attention. I wasn't sure how to follow up with my friend, and I soon got so far into my own world, that I simply forgot to call her. I didn't call to see how she and her family were coping with this life-threatening problem. Last night she called to chat and the conversation turned to her hurt at my not calling to check on her. She had gone through months of hell because she was so worried. I'm embarrassed to confess this. It wasn't intentional. It just happened. And I feel simply awful.

I don't have all the good answers that I see on other blogs and newsletters, where point by point, you can see the way to being a better person. I'm sick of them actually. Life isn't point by point.

Sometimes we make mistakes and we're brought face to face with our weaknesses.

Sometimes we need to step back, take the time to reflect and turn off the noise. I came across Pico Iyer's article "The Joy of Quiet" recently in the NY Times.

"The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines.
So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen."

[Some] friends try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown..... that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.” The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for."

Slowing down is the key, not working harder, longer and faster. Walks in the woods with my puppy and grandkids. Visits with friends.

Serendipity

2011-12-11T05:48:00.001-08:00

Each time I begin a painting, I wonder where it will go. I begin intuitively, holding a thought in my mind of what I'd like to express. My paintings are abstract investigations of landscape, symbols, memory and process. I know artists who are fully confident that even if they can't see what the finished painting will look like, trust that the process will resolve itself and become a painting. I can't say that I am so confident. When I step into the studio each day, I feel to some extent that I'm stepping into the abyss. This is the excitement of abstract painting. I have no idea where the work will go or how I will get there or if it will resolve itself. And yet they do, they always eventually do.

I love that razor's edge though, between safety and the abyss. I think it keeps the work honest. There is some sense of terror there!

Yesterday, I reread a quote of Joseph Campbell's from the book, The Art of Pilgrimage by Phil Cousineau. Campbell had just made a speech in Chicago about the nature of the goddess and the role of the artist in society. Afterwards, a woman came up to him to tell him that she was going to Greece to 'find the spirit of the goddess'. She showed Campbell her detailed itinerary, which included precise calculations of the best times to visit every major cultural attraction. "Do you think this is sufficient?", she asked Campbell. He took her free hand in his and with great kindness said, "Dear lady, I sincerely hope that all does not go as planned." When Cousineau later asked him about this response, Campbell replied, "How will the gods ever find her when she has done everything in her power to make sure they never will? Unless you leave room for serendipity, how can the divine enter in?"

Red-Mark Rothko and Hotel Art

2011-12-04T11:03:00.001-08:00

Thoughts of Stones #5 ©Janice Mason Steeves 2011

Yesterday I went with my friend Jane Lind to see the award-winning play, Red, at the Bluma Appel Theatre in Toronto. What an experience!

Director Kim Collier describes Red, as 'a play about faith versus doubt-in the artistic process, in ourselves, in our work, and in our place in the world. I think we all are confronted with the sturggles that faced Mark Rothko: what does my life's work add up to? How will I be remembered? Have I been true to myself? These are all questions that eventually demand an answer from us."

Red is set in Rothko's studio in 1958 in New York City where he was working on his mural commission for the Four Season's Hotel. The play documents a fictionalized account of Rothko's conversations with his assistant, Ken. We get a look into Rothko's intense artistic vision- to create art that expressed archetypal human emotions and communicated with the viewer at the deepest level. His assistant, Ken, challenged Rothko's thinking and accused him of not being in touch with the world, of living in an ivory tower, of becoming a has-been, while the world moved on to Andy Warhol and Pop Art. Rothko held to his beliefs that art can change the world but felt he was betraying himself and his own ideals by 'selling out' to the Four Season's with this lucrative commission. Finally, he went for dinner there. Horrified to see only very wealthy patrons, overcome by the clinking of glasses and forks, the inane conversation and artificiality, Rothko impulsively withdrew from the mural commission, believing he was protecting his paintings and his own ideals. In the end, Ken was fired from Rothko's studio, soon after he declared, "It's only a painting.", betraying Rothko's deep-seated belief that these were much more than paintings. They were like living beings.

I am reminded of Sean Scully's comment, that in his work, he is trying to show, "Everything, all at once".

On the drive home, Jane and I found ourselves wanting to discuss all of the topics that came up for us in the play, besides the gorgeous set and production. The actor who played Rothko, Jim Mezon was fabulous in his intensity, and looked amazingly like Rothko. Ken (David Coomber) was the perfect foil for that intensity.

We wanted to discuss that intensity of Rothko's and what the situation is in art now, is there any of that sort of passion left in painting? Do artist's want to communicate emotions, or the absence of emotions? What's the future of painting? What makes a good abstract painting? Jane will be writing a blog post on her experience of the play and our conversation that would be interesting to check out.

And then as conversation does, ours shifted and flowed along to other related things. I remembered this week, an artist friend, who was at a workshop a few years ago, where the insensitive instructor told her that her painting was 'Hotel Art'. My friend said her feelings were hurt, her ego was bruised and she just wanted to hide.

I can understand that there are artists who paint Hotel Art, but those are not the ones who usually take classes or have their work critiqued. On that same thought, another friend, who is not an artist, suggested I look up the work of an artist she likes. I did so and was simply horrified. This was an example of Hotel Art. It's painted for decoration. Very slick. She has a formula: texture the background with moulding paste, then add drippy washes of transparent colours with a dab of dark here and there. Passionless, poorly painted. It sells well.

Rothko knew his paintings weren't Hotel Art. These paintings, originally intended for the Four Seasons, eventually went to the Tate Gallery.

“Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit, and the only means of making concrete the purpose of its varied quickness and stillness.”-Mark Rothko

“Pictures must be miraculous.”-Mark Rothko

Thoughts on Inspiration

2011-11-06T19:06:00.000-08:00

©Janice Mason Steeves 2011

A couple of weeks ago, Helen Hagemann, an Australian poet who was in residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at the same time I was, emailed to tell me that she had written a poem inspired by one of my paintings she saw there. A section of that painting took her eye. I am honoured by this. I was also delighted at how my work was interpreted so differently than my intention as I created it. I include her blog post here with her poem: Her Blue Dress and encourage you to check out her website to read more of her poems and see the books she has written.

Helen's writing this poem, makes me consider sources of inspiration: what inspires us, keeps us creating? Maybe it's different for everyone.

I have just finished reading "The Aran Islands", written in 1907 by J.M. Synge, the famous Irish playwright. He spent time on each of the three Aran Islands, mainly, Inish Mann where I visited in early October. Synge was clearly inspired by the islanders, especially by the folktales, songs and stories of fairies, told him by these simple, rugged people. But he was also inspired by the remoteness of the place, the difficulty of making passage there. The sea, a very powerful living being, played a pivotal role in the lives of the islanders, dependent as they were on it. Their only boats (the same kind used today for fishing), were small canvas-covered currachs, each rowed by four men. Today though, ferries ply the channels to move passengers and cargo. Synge's experiences there and the folktales he collected were to form the basis for many of his plays.

I am also inspired very much by place: In my last series of paintings that I exhibited at Agnes Bugera Gallery, in Edmonton, my thoughts were about the prairies where I grew up.

In Ireland, at my artist residency, it was interesting to find that the colours of my paintings became so much more muted than at home. Often when I travel, I don't paint. I only photograph and absorb and write my thoughts. When I get home, and after some weeks, or months, I find that my paintings begin to take on the feel (at least to me) of the place I visited. And what surprised me in Ireland, was how quickly those changes were made while I was still there, like this painting that Helen was inspired by.

So thanks very much to Helen, and with her permission, I am printing her poem.

Her Blue Dress

for Janice

You will want to know

the season

how a gown can slip itself over nose and cheek

and be visible from art

how Emily Dickinson stood by a window

pressing her pink hips

through a passage of time

lifting a blue taffeta dress

over her shoulders

to reach

cool, upturned toes

where poems lay like stepping stones

on the hardwood floor.

The long blue dress

was too big for this slip

of a girl

but she proceeded down the hall

where a mirror

motioned her to look

at the poet she would become.

(3rd draft)

I was instantly drawn to Janice's artwork at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Ireland where we met and were housed in rather large cottages. Her series included separate paintings joined as one. I have used one panel only from her work titled Thoughts of Stones to represent a mirror and a blue dress. I saw Emily Dickinson's blue dress inside the painting (and, I guess, I was also inspired after reading Billy Collins' poem Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

So there we were ( including Rebecca Crowell from Wisconsin- another fine artist!) each in our separate units, inspiring each other, and both encouraging me to visit the Megalithic art at Loughcrew. I have many more poems to come! Janice's Thoughts of Stones and her full art work can be viewed at Janice Mason Steeves

The Art Gallery of Ontario Through a Child's Eyes

2011-11-01T06:25:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I took my granddaughter for her first visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario. First things first, we had to climb onto the inviting Henry Moore sculpture near the entrance! My granddaughter brought her own camera and I thought it was fun to see the AGO through her eyes. Other than this first photo and the one of her in front of the Chagall sign (way down below), the rest of the photos were hers.

Designed by Frank Gehry, the building is an exciting one for children of all ages. It took us perhaps one-half hour to get past the front lobby, where she delightfully scampered up and down the ribbon-like wheelchair ramp. Then on to the winding staircase that actually goes outside the building for a few twists and turns.

From up on top of this twisty staircase, when I lifted her up, she could see a panorama view of Toronto.

The staircase, like the wheelchair ramp, was incredibly exciting and we could have spent the rest of the day right here, running up and down, if only my legs could do it!

Then onto the Galeria Italia and where you feel you're in the hold of a glass ship, with enormous trees growing out of it.

This sculpture was created by Italian artist Giuseppe Penone and will only be in the Galeria Italia until January 2012. We were glad to have seen it.

Now on to the Chagall exhibit:

We stayed there maybe 10 or 15 minutes, walking steadily through the exhibit, stopping only to look at the last two very large and colourful paintings. Then on to the really important thing: lunch.

And a stop to buy a little souvenir of the day:

Then home on the GO train where we found a ladybug crawling near our seat on the train.

What a fun day!

The Power of Limits and the Walls of Aran

2011-10-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

I'm aiming to hold onto the feeling of Ireland for a while yet. Not so easy though since my re-entry into life hasn't exactly started. I've just recently returned from Edmonton, where my show, Memories of Home, opened on Saturday, Oct. 15th at the Agnes Bugera Gallery. Being in Edmonton, where I lived until I was 17, many memories of growing up under the big open sky of the Prairies came back to me.

In this suspended state between returning home from Ireland and opening my show in Edmonton, my thoughts keep returning to the stone walls on the island of Inish Mann. Perhaps it is because I was born in the Prairies that I felt so claustrophobic there, hemmed in by legions of stone walls. There I was, on the middle island of the Aran Islands, that is whipped by constant winds which blow up tumultuous, ever-changing clouds, and surrounded by a grey sea that is often covered by white frothy-capped waves. A wild, open environment. But there was not an inch of the island that was not covered with stone walls.

The physicality of such limiting walls, made me consider the idea of limits in art.

In her book," Prospect, the Journal of an Artist", Anne Truitt writes about going on a driving trip across Canada and arriving in Carberry, Manitoba. She said that she 'understood for the first time that limitlessness might be a threat, that it might induce the reverse of claustrophobia, a desire for enclosure, for protection from the naked eye of the sky." She muses that it would take a store of courage to live on land that so emphatically does not need a human hand, and that people may have fallen in love with the prairie, as sailors fall in love with the sea. Truitt wondered aloud to her travelling companion if they would "have been moved to art if we had been born on this prairie?"

Perhaps the reason for acres of stone walls on Inish Mann was for enclosure and protection. Surely the walls were built to clear stones from the land, as well as for protection from the wind and to create delineated pastures for the cattle and sheep. But because of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of walls, my sense is that something more is at play. The walls give limits against the limitless.

Creativity comes from limits, not freedom.

Stephen Nachmanovitch, in his book, "Free Play, Improvisation in Life and Art", says, "Sometimes we damn limits, but without them art is not possible. They provide us with something to work with and against. In practising our craft we surrender, to a great extent, to letting the materials dictate the design. Limits yield intensity. Working within the limits of the medium forces us to change our own limits. Improvisation is not breaking with forms and limitations just to be 'free', but using them as the very means of transcending ourselves."

The poet Wendell Berry writes:
"The impeded stream is the one that sings."

Ireland-Sean Scully

2011-10-09T07:14:00.000-07:00

Sean Scully Exhibition

Cut Ground

Kerlin Gallery

Dublin

On my last day in Ireland, October 6th, my friend Mary and I went to see Sean Scully's show at Kerlin Gallery, in Dublin. It was just opening that day and I was hoping to see it before I left Ireland.

I spent some time in the gallery and just as I decided to leave, to my surprise and delight, there was Sean Scully coming up the stairs. He was to be interviewed for Irish television by the Irish painter, Sinead Ni Mhaonaigh. Scully is a very tall and imposing figure, balding, with a fringe of short grey hair and a stubbily grey beard, looking every bit his sixty-six years until he begins to speak. Then his entire demeanour changes and a fire comes into his eyes.

I was really privileged to be able to listen to the entire interview as I stood in the gallery. Scully and Sinead roamed around the enormous white space as the videographer moved the huge rolling camera in and out and around the conversation. Scully discussed his thoughts on painting and life, talking about how his work is informed by grief, particularly the loss of his son in the 80's, which forever transformed his use of colour. Listening to his wide-ranging and intense thoughts on the future of art, his disdain for conceptual art, his love of painting, I felt like I was hearing a man who is a warrior for the importance of deep, emotional, resonant art in the world. His work is informed by his own brand of spirituality and he is unafraid to say that. In fact, when asked which two people he would like to meet, living or dead, cited Jesus Christ because he was such an independent thinker, and Mahatma Ghandi.

Sean Scully with Sinead Ni Mhaonaigh for Irish Television RTE

I asked him to sign the stunningly beautiful boxed catalogues that accompanied this exhibition.The catalogues included three inserts. The covers of two of them are written in Arabic. One catalogue will accompany his exhibition at Kerlin Gallery at Abu Dhabi Art Fair, November 16-19 and refers to time Scully has spent in Morocco. That part of the exhibition is called Tin Mal, which refers to an important spiritual site in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Scully has painted a series of major works dedicated to sacred sites, the first being Iona, 2004-2006, now at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This exhibition is called Cut Ground and refers to a story from Scully's childhood where he stole candles from his church and hid them away in his garden, in an effort to keep the light.

My residency and visit to Ireland are over for now. I will be processing this journey for some time and will write more of my thoughts about it as I go along. But I know I will be back in Ireland next September. I've already been accepted into the artist residency, Cill Railaig, near the Ring of Kerry, in County Kerry.

Final Days at Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Ireland

2011-10-02T02:26:00.000-07:00

Thoughts of Stones 33 x 42" ©Janice Mason Steeves 2011

The last few days at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre were spent photographing around the lake (Annaghmakerrig), the buildings and the grounds, as though trying to gobble it up to hold in my memory. It was a stimulating, hard-working time for me. I completed five multi-panel paintings of various sizes while I was at the residency. My colours really changed for this period of time. They became very muted, reflecting the greys of the stones at the neolithic sites, and the overcast skies and soft tones of the landscape. I'm already looking forward to another residency in Ireland next September.

The best part of the residency was the intensely stimulating, creative contact with other artists: writers, musicians, poets, playwrights and visual artists. Many gave spontaneous 'sessions' in the evenings where they improvised with other musicians, singers, poets or tap dancers. What a huge gift! Many gave away their books of prose, poetry or musical CD's. It was also a huge delight to have the companionship of my friend, the American artist Rebecca Crowell. Our shared dinners, stimulating conversations and times of screaming hilarity added a huge piece to this residency.

Improv tap dancing to the sax

Collaboration with poet Ann Egan (L), Little John Nee on ukelele and Anka Draugelates on piano

Anka Draugelates on viola

I echo the words that Little John Nee signed in the Tyrone Guthrie Guest Book:

I leave here a better person.

The Language of the Stones-Artist Residency Ireland

2011-09-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

After spending time in the sacred sites of Loughcrew, and Newgrange, I have been wondering about the meaning of the carvings on the stones. Were they a language of some sort, telling about the purpose of the cairns, did they track the entrance of the sun into the chambers, were they simply a kind of decoration?

When I came into my cottage here at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, I found some words scratched onto a heart-shaped slate that a previous tenant had left behind. Lovely that the word is Brave. The word 'courage' comes from coeur, French for heart. Be Brave. What a wonderful motto to begin my residency here. And now I'm in the final few days of the residency and so I'm looking at my work and hoping that I have been brave.

In response to the Be Brave carving, I found a Yeats quote about courage. I did a small installation piece down by the lake, carving the quote onto some small slates that I found by the boathouse. It reads: "Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle? A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself".

Here are a few of the pieces I've created in Studio 2.

At home I use cold wax medium and oil paint, but for ease of transportation, I brought along acrylics and heavy body gel medium. I brought 11x 14" multimedia artboard panels to paint on, giving myself the challenge of working in a new medium on a new medium! The panels are made of paper that is coated with resin. They need no priming or sealing. I normally work in a fairly large format at home and found the 11 x 14 " size a bit constraining. So I made them into multi-panel pieces.

I'm working with the idea of the language of the stones.

Artist Residency Ireland-Newgrange and Lough Crew

2011-09-20T08:54:00.000-07:00

Before I came to the artist residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, I stayed with my friend Mary in Dublin whose passion is visiting the sacred sites across this country. She took Rebecca Crowell and me out to Loughcrew, Slieve na Calliagh, the hill of the witch or hag's mountain. Read Rebecca's blog posts of this residency too.

The remains at Loughcrew are passage tombs, a particular style of neolithic architecture. They have a passage, ordinarily long and narrow, which opens into a domed chamber. We first went to Carnbane East. It was a long, rainy and wildly windy walk to the top of the hill to Cairn T (sometimes called the Hag's Cairn). We had collected the key for the passage tomb at the Loughcrew Historic Gardens Coffee Shop. Imagine that we were able to go into this cairn and sit inside, in the dark, beside these incredible stones! Cairn T is oriented to the autumn equinox, which happens within the next three days. At the autumn equinox, the rising sun shines into the back of this chamber, lighting up the carvings in a sequence as the shaft of sunlight makes it's way across the chamber wall. The two photos below were shot with only with the available light that was shining into the tomb on September 10th.

After taking our fill of photos, we sat quietly for a while. in the dark of the chamber, amazed and grateful to be here. Afterward, Mary, Rebecca and I had a picnic lunch and hot tea in the shelter of the rocks just outside the door of Cairn T.

We hiked over to another hill, Carnbane West on this windy day that was sometimes sunny, sometimes pouring with rain. We couldn't get into the chamber there, but climbed around the stones and took photos of the carvings and lichen on the megaliths.

Last Friday, three of us from the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, hired a cab and drove to Newgrange, a world heritage site in County Meath. Estimated to be 5000 years old, it is the largest and one of the most important prehistoric megalithic sites in Europe. It was a whole different experience than Loughcrew, but also one not to be missed. The area is called the Boyne Valley complex, which consists of three sites: Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. We went only to Newgrange. I came to this site in 1998 when I did a workshop at Dunderry, here in Ireland. We had the tremendous privilege then of going into the chamber in a small group, before the general public came in and chanting for 1/2 hour. It was an incredible experience. On this trip, we went with a group and a guide and stayed for probably 10 minutes in the chamber. All is carefully orchestrated. No sitting on the floor of the chamber in the dark, leaning against the stones, as we had done at Loughcrew.

Approaching Newgrange in the rain.

Waiting to go into the chamber. Pouring outside.

One of the kerbstones along the outside at the back.

Artist Residency Ireland

2011-09-15T02:14:00.000-07:00

For the month of September I'm doing an artist residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in County Monaghan, Ireland. The 450 acres and buildings are stunningly beautiful.

Tyrone Guthrie (1900-1971) was an acclaimed English theatre director who also wrote plays for radio, including one series that he wrote in Montreal on Canadian history for the Canadian National Railways Radio, which eventually became the CBC.

In 1953, he was invited to help launch the Stratford Festival of Canada. Intrigued with the idea of starting a Shakespeare theatre in a remote Canadian location, he enlisted actors Alec Guinness and Irene Worth to star in the inaugural production of Richard III. All performances in the first seasons took place in a large tent on the banks of the Avon River. He remained as Artistic Director for three seasons, and his work at Stratford had a strong influence in the development of Canadian theatre.

I'm staying in one of the self-catering cottages, pictured above.

The sitting room of my cottage.

The walking path along the lake in front of the Centre.

Horses in the field at the end of the lake.

My artist friend from Wisconsin, Rebecca Crowell is here at the same time as me. We've been here three days now and I'm beginning to settle down from all the newness and excitement. As he was showing us around on the first day, Paddy-the "go-to" person here-said that this place is the 'centre of loveliness'. What a positive way to begin our residency here.

We went for dinner in the big house last night and met the artists who are residents at the moment..it changes constantly. Twelve artists were at the table for dinner last night. Some people come for a month or six weeks, others come for one week. Many are from Ireland and many are writers or poets or multi-discipline artists. Most have been here numerous times. One of the musicians is leaving tomorrow and so someone suggested that we have a 'session' in the music room. The music room is an enormous open space, with a wide-planked wooden floor covered with a thick blue carpet. Tall windows open up to the courtyard below. A huge, ornate chandelier hangs from the 15' ceiling and a grand piano sits ready to play. One slim, intense man from Switzerland plays electric guitar. A small slender blonde woman from Germany improvised with him. She plays viola and does voice improv along with her own playing. She used every sound imaginable with her voice, nose and throat (although not a beat box kind of sound)...and was accompanied by the guitarist...it was absolutely incredible. When I closed my eyes her voice became another instrument playing every range of sound and emotion. Then, another man in the group, who is an Irish-born poet, spoke one of his poems to the voice/guitar sounds while another women artist did some improv chanting. The performance made me cry it was so haunting and lovely. The poet/voice/guitar group improvised three pieces together, and another woman read a story she'd written, then sang A cappella.

If I get nothing else out of this residency, this one evening would be enough.

The Excitement of a Workshop

2011-08-12T17:32:00.000-07:00

What will you do with this one wild and precious life? 36x60" oil/cold wax on panel ©Janice Mason Steeves

Tomorrow I teach a two-day workshop here in my home studio. Today I am preparing. First things first, I'm cleaning my studio. What a job that is, sorting papers, cleaning shelves, vacuuming and moving paintings to the garage to make room for eight students. Each time I teach a workshop, I plan what I will do that is different. I consider what I have learned from teaching my last class. How can I teach better?

We come with high expectations into a workshop, everyone looking for something from it. Some might hope to find their artistic voices. Some want to come and learn a fun new technique. My own sense is that people come because they want to move somewhere else in their painting. Many want the inspiration to 'get back at it' if they have stopped making art for a while. Some want to break through to new places in their work. I believe we all want to grow. We all want to 'change'.

I have only been teaching for a year, and although I bring nearly 30 years of painting experience with me, I feel like I am walking on new ground each time I teach. I am loving the experience. It pushes me to explain about colour and design, principles that have become second nature to me. I find myself constantly reading with the view to teaching what I learn, rereading colour theory and the elements of design so I can more easily explain them, so I can be a better teacher. Each time I go into a workshop to teach, I feel that same anticipation, "Can I do this", "Can I give them what they are looking for"?

For me, the main tool I use in teaching and in encouraging students to move through blocks and fears, is encouraging play, creating a safe place where freedom can play unbounded. This method of working with cold wax medium and oil, using a dough scraper to move the paint, is a completely freeing experience in itself. Giving up fine detailed brushwork and moving into wide sweeping strokes loosens up the body and the spirit.

Stuart Brown, M.D., author of "Play", says that "play is anything but trivial. It is a basic biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition. When we play we are open to possibility and the sparks of new insights. Play-defined as any kind of purposeless, all-consuming, restorative activity-the is single most significant factor in determining our success and happiness."

So let the play begin……….

Considering Solitude

2011-07-24T09:10:00.000-07:00

Heaven Can Wait 42x42" oil/cold wax on panel © Janice Mason Steeves

Still feeling the effects of my week long home retreat (how long can this feeling last?), I'm thinking about solitude and it's place in the creative process. In Paul Tillich's quote, solitude is the 'glory of being alone'. Solitude is something you choose. It's different than loneliness.

- “In order to be open to creativity, one must have the capacity forconstructive use of solitude. One must overcome the fear of being alone.” ~Rollo May

As I went into my home retreat a couple of weeks ago, I had many people tell me that they just wouldn't be able to do a home retreat. "Oh I wish I could do that", was a very common response. Several friends-many of them artists- told me that they thought I was courageous to be alone for a week. Courage is not spending a week alone and unplugged. Courage is Harry Potter fighting Voldemort to the death. Courage comes from the latin word "cor" meaning heart, which is a common metaphor for inner strength. Courage is having your first solo art show. Courage is changing directions in your work when you have no idea where you're going or how you're going to do it. Courage is following your heart no matter where it leads. Courage is choosing a life in the arts even though it may not pay the bills. It is not spending a week alone.

Ester Buchholz, author of The Call of Solitude, says that "Life's creative solutions require alonetime. Solitude is required for the unconscious to process and unravel problems. Others inspire us, information feeds us, practice improves our performance, but we need quiet time to figure things out, to emerge with new discoveries, to unearth original answers."

She goes on to say, "The natural creativity in all of us-the sudden and slow insights, bursts and gentle bubbles of imagination-is found as a result of alone time. Passion evolves in aloneness. Both creativity and curiosity are bred through contemplation."

The retreat sort of re-booted my awareness of how much I need space or solitude to create. Space that is created through unplugging and leaving long open-ended days. I think that the 'rules of engagement' that I set for the retreat can be modified for daily use. I guess the word is self-discipline.

Buchholz says, "Alonetime is a great protector of the self and the human spirit. Ultimately, we might follow the message of every practiced meditator, who suggests living each moment as a new moment, with greater sensitivity to one's thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations. That is the real message of alonetime, and it is through that profound self-awareness, that inner aloneness, that our lives will flower".

Kafka said: "You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet and still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet". Or what about Picasso who said, "Without great solitude, no serious work is possible."

And then in the words of Gertrude Stein, "When they are alone they want to be with others and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that."

Artist's Home Retreat

2011-07-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

"Go instead where there is no path" 50x50" oil /cold wax medium ©Janice Mason Steeves 2011

"Language has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone" Paul Tillich

My week-long home retreat was a much-needed refreshing break. It ended on July 8th, which also happens to be my birthday. Friends came over to help me celebrate. A lovely way to close off the week. I managed to follow all the guidelines I'd set up for myself: see my last blog post for the rules of engagement. I made the 'rules' to set the parameters of the retreat, to encourage myself to unplug as though I were on a small remote island for a week.

I didn't use the computer at all but kept daily notes in my journal of my experience and ideas and thoughts. The occasional twinge of loneliness in the first day or two didn't last long. The creative juices were flowing in abundance in my studio. My focus was on being aware of an attitude of play. As soon as I noticed that my mind became involved, the work tightened up and I became indecisive and tense. I put the work aside, grabbed another painting and let the play continue.

Amazing to me, I also did a lot of cleaning jobs in my house and my studio. I did that in my last retreat and it surprised me both times because those are normally jobs that I can postpone indefinitely. On my hands and knees in a particularly grimy area of my laundry room, I actually thought I could hear my deceased mother-who loved housecleaning-talking to me over my shoulder, telling me how good I was to be doing all these cleaning jobs! Thanks Mum. Maybe I was just spending too much time alone. Anyway, I got some soap and water into many slightly disgusting corners of the house. I have to think that because the retreat feels like such a nurturing time, that cleaning the house and studio have some connection with that. I am cleaning out those corners that need work and making room for new things in my life. I kept telling myself that.

The retreat truly did feel nurturing. Not quite like going to a spa, but caring for myself in another way. I was giving myself the gift of time, of space that expanded, away from daily responsibilities; meetings, appointments, emails and phone calls. I continued to look after myself by going for long walks in the woods, making lovely meals for myself, including homemade chicken soup, which lasted me for the week and zucchini bread. I painted for long hours each day and revelled in the freedom of ideas that seemed to flow. Most evenings, I sat outdoors in my screened-in porch, reading or writing.

Feeling that my creativity seems to greatly increase during these retreats, it was so interesting that during this week, I heard an interview on CBC radio with David Strayer a Professor of Psychology from the University of Utah. He studies the effect of multi-tasking on the brain. He talked about going on a week-long wilderness trip with several colleagues. They decided to leave their computers and cell phones at home. Strayer gave his colleagues a Remote Associates Task, a word association creativity test before they left. After three days on the trip he gave the task again. Their creativity scores increased by 45%.
After three days back at work, their results on the creativity test dropped back. Strayer claims that we have better clarity of thought when we get away from technology and into nature on a regular basis. Even walking in a park for 45 min/day has measurable benefits.

As well as being in nature and unplugging, solitude is also a significant part of the creative process. It was glory to be alone.

Planning an Artist's Retreat at Home

2011-06-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

Wine with Everything 24x24" oil/cold wax on panel ©Janice Mason Steeves 2011

Each year for the past two years, I've organized a home retreat for myself. Alyson Stanfield of artbizcoach.com, interviewed me a couple of weeks ago, for her online group called The Artist's Conspiracy about my home retreats. She was interested in how I go about planning them, and what I get out of them.

Even though I live in the country, I still get caught up in the busyness of life; spending too much time on the computer; doing the business part of my art; keeping up with friends; spending time with family; doing volunteer jobs, appointments. The regular demands of life. I used to have a cottage that had no hydro, and no phone, where I'd spend a week or two at a time by myself painting and writing poetry. I found this to be an extremely creative time.

I decided to create that same retreat space at home. I prepare for it as though I am going on a vacation. I book the week in my calendar and make sure I don't organize any activities or appointments or meetings for that week. It's a week to be alone; painting, reading, writing, walking. A retreat.

My rules for the week are these:

No computer use.
No answering the phone. I check messages in the evening just to make sure that there are no emergencies.
No driving. I buy in all my groceries, rent a few movies, buy all the art supplies I'll need.
No seeing any family or friends. I let them know what I'm doing in advance.
No newspapers or TV.

Other than these rules, I don't structure my time or work. I just let that happen organically if it's going to. But I do work in my studio for long hours each day. And I love that. It would be painful to cut out studio time. Besides painting, I had time to nap, read, and go for long walks. Time stretches out like the endless summer days when we were ten years old.

I have a couple of good books to read: "Joan Mitchell, Lady Painter" by Patricia Albers, recommended by Alyson Stanfield for her Twitter/Facebook Club. "And Life is a Verb, 37 Days to Wake Up, Be Mindful, and Live Intentionally" by Patti Digh.

Alyson asked how artists could do this kind of a retreat if they have to plan it around their husbands/wives and children. I suggested that they could house-sit for a friend, or studio-sit. Plan this for when your kids are at camp and your husband/wife is away. Go alone to your cottage if you have one or ask a friend to stay at theirs. Perhaps you could do a mini-retreat, where you work in your studio space without internet or TV or contact with friends each day from 9-5. Just plan it. It's a fabulous gift to yourself.

I felt a little lonely the first day with the withdrawal from contact, but after that I wasn't lonely for a second and after the 7th day, I didn't want the retreat to end. I wrote in my journal each day, and as I reread these journal notes for Alyson's interview, I noticed that during the retreat, I seemed to become more joyful, more refreshed and relaxed as each day passed. It's like taking an internal shower, or going on a juice fast or lying mindlessly on an air mattress on a sunny day bobbing on the gentle waves.

I begin my next home retreat in two days. Can't wait.

"Inside myself is a place where I live all alone, and that's where I renew my springs that never dry up." ~Pearl Buck

Cold Wax + Oil Workshop in Winnipeg

2011-05-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

Last week I gave a cold wax and oil workshop in Winnipeg to these artists. All of them have been painting in acrylic for many years, so cold wax and oil was a big departure for them. And even though I suggested that they make 'bad art' in one exercise during this class, there were some really exciting paintings that came out of the workshop.

I've probably written about making 'bad art' before. The idea was mentioned in the book, the Tao of Photography, as well as in Eric Maisel's book, "Coaching the Artist Within":
"To create we have to take the bad with the good. We're bound to write bad paragraphs along with good ones. That's the eternal law. We can get rid of those bad paragraphs later on, but first we must write them. Otherwise we won't write anything at all. If we try to write only the good paragraphs, we are three-quarters of the way toward paralysis. The name that we've coined for this problem is 'perfectionism.' But it isn't that people afflicted this way are striving to be perfect. They are just striving to be good, which would be no problem at all, if only they also had internal permission to be bad."

Many of the artists in this class belong to a collective called the 'Group of 8". They meet regularly to plan group shows, to discuss their art, offer critiques and support each other. What a gift that is. Part of what I like to do in my classes is to set aside time for the students to share their background, as well as their thoughts and experiences related to their art with each other. The class comes to a whole other level of depth and support when the students share their experiences in life and art.

One of the women in the group is having a solo show in the fall. She has a friend who offered to help her with her artist's statement by providing her with a list of sixty questions to ask herself. Thoughtful questions about her art practice..."Why did you decide to be a visual artist?, Why do you paint the kind of images you do?, How do your paintings express who you are as an artist? How do you know when a painting is finished?" We tried to tackle some of these questions in the class at lunchtimes, but there wasn't enough time in a 2 day workshop to discuss more than one or two. I'll save a few of those questions for a longer workshop.

Confidence, like art, never comes from having all the answers; it comes from being open to all the questions. Earl Gray Steven

To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions.

Sam Keen

Why Do We Need Art?

2011-05-08T06:23:00.000-07:00

Cicada 42x42" oil on panel ©Janice Mason Steeves 2011

The southern Ontario City of Woodstock received a $3.3 million dollar grant last year to renovate and expand their art gallery to four times the space with the ability to house world class exhibitions. With construction nearing completion, this past week, recently elected Mayor Pat Sobeski dealt the city and the arts a huge blow. In a last minute decision City Council decided to offer the space instead to a local college and leave the art gallery in the small cramped space they have occupied for the past twenty-eight years. In a rally last weekend, a huge group of arts supporters turned out to protest this move, waving signs that said: "ART IS FOR EVERYONE". The mayor is now reconsidering his decision and may propose that the college and the art gallery share the space. This is a less than perfect decision for the art gallery but still affords them twice the space they had previously.

Just before the rally, in my anger at the mayor's ignorant attitude to the arts, I wrote him a letter. My letter most likely fell on deaf ears, but writing it gave me some small satisfaction.

I reminded him of the speech given by Canada's Governor-General, Adrienne Clarkson when she presented the first Governor General's Awards for Visual and Media Arts in March 2000.

Here are some selected quotations from that magnificent and inspiring speech. The entire speech was printed in the National Post, March 23, 2000:

     "All art is magical activity because even though its subject matter can be representational or abstract, it is meant to propel us to a level of consciousness that’s not purely intellectual. As the British philosopher, R.G. Collingwood said sixty years ago, “Art is a necessity for every sort and condition of man and is actually found in every healthy society. A society which thinks, as our own does, that it has outlived that need is wrong, or else it is a dying society, perishing for lack of interest in it’s own maintenance.’
     We need art. Those who deny this need deny society as a whole its right to live and experience with every fibre as sentient beings. They deny the evolving humanity which makes society aspire to the heights of perception. They deny the deep community that comes from a shared vision.
   For most of us who appreciate art, but do not create it, art is, in the words of Baudelaire, infinitely precious, a nectar that is at once refreshing and warming: bringing both the physical and spiritual into a natural, ideal balance.
     Those who would deny us the right to spiritual nourishment by alluding to an ill-defined and, to be sure, contemptible 'elite' do not understand what it is to see, to be enlightened by a vision that transforms from within. All of us can be changed, can be transformed, at any time, by a painting, a sculpture or a film.
   By drawing us along with them, artists make us aware that we all create art,in every action and every word. We must therefore all strive to express human emotion, to vanquish that which corrupts the conscience in the eternal struggle to be human.
     Art is what makes life worthwhile, what makes it passionate, what makes it livable. To all of you who have given us the ability to see, to feel alive, to be more human, thank you."

Maintaining a Spirit of Play-Beginner's Mind

2011-04-22T07:25:00.000-07:00


I Had a Sweater This Colour ©Janice Mason Steeves 2011

My work of the past year has been one of going into the studio with no preconceived idea of what I will do. I enter in a spirit of play I am balancing the technical skills I have learned over many years as an artist in one hand, with the idea of knowing nothing in the other.

"The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing." This quotation, attributed to Hemingway, (or was it Henry Miller?) is about this balancing point of knowing it all and knowing nothing. In the excellent book, The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe, she says, "You cannot manufacture inexperience, but you can maintain it." "In it's purest form, inexperience erases fear. You do not know what is and is not possible and therefore everything is possible".

There is a surrender to the process, a giving up of control to the dialogue between yourself and the work. Anna Maria Maiolino in her artist's statement in her show in Barclona last fall at the Tapies Museum, spoke about art...She belonged to a movement called Brazilian Neo-Concretism, where the work of art is not seen as an 'object', but as a "quasi-body, an organic being". Maiolino's creates work that is co-produced through the relationship of her materials and her body. She accepts that different work appears at different times in her life. But it is inter-connected, all of the same body.

On the blog, Zen Habits, there is a wonderful post, "How to Live Life to the Max with Beginner's Mind". Mary Jaksch gives us 11 tips for how to do this. Here are two of them.

Discard fear of failure. When did you last start something new? Was it maybe a while back? As children we are always starting something new. Then, as we go through our twenties, thirties, and further, we become more hesitant about being a beginner again. Why? Maybe because we don’t want to look silly when we fail.
There are always plenty of people ready to snigger when we take the first wobbly steps. But it’s our choice whether to take notice or not.

Tip: Immerse yourself in your actions and forget the watchers.

Use the spirit of enquiry. Beginner’s Mind is about using the spirit of enquiry – without getting stuck in preconceived ideas. There’s a Zen story about this:
A professor once visited a Japanese master to inquire about Zen. The master served tea. When the visitor’s cup was full, the master kept pouring. Tea spilled out of the cup and over the table.
“The cup is full!” said the professor. “No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” said the master, “You are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
You can see how this story applies not only to learning about Zen, but to learning about anything at all. The spirit of enquiry is the mind that is open to the unknown, and empty of pre-conceived ideas.

Tip: Focus on questions, not on answers.

Letting go of control is a key factor and not one that is easy to achieve, especially when as artists, we have deadlines and perhaps expectations from galleries. It's necessary to embrace mistakes and surprises. Uncertainty is our companion.

Are You Too Old to Change?

2011-03-29T06:22:00.000-07:00

I taught a Cold Wax and Oil Painting workshop this past weekend with a group of women who were likely all over sixty years of age. By the time we get into our 60's we bring a rich life experience to our work: most have been married once or maybe 4 times, have grown children and now grandchildren, had long and successful careers in business or education or medicine, cared for ailing parents when they were dying. They bring the wealth of years of learning and life to their art and to this workshop.

One thing about getting older I find is that there is a clear awareness that time is limited. I could tell myself when I was 50 that I was only half way through my life. But not now! Barbara, one of the women in the workshop, worried that at this age, she was too old to change her subject matter in her painting. My own feeling is, why not spend that time doing exactly what I want to do? Why not change? Let my work lead me to new worlds, new ways of working. We don't stop growing when we turn 50 or 65 or 92.

I had a woman in my last class named Dorothy Wilde who is 92. She came into the art class on a walker. She has been a very creative and successful ceramicist for perhaps 40 years. As her strength has faded, she gave up pottery and took up printmaking. Here she was, in my painting class, delightedly learning a new skill. Dorothy was not at all afraid to play and experiment. She wasn't worried about making a product, about having an end result. She was there for the sheer enjoyment of making art. The sheer enjoyment of learning and playing.

"We don't stop playing because we grow older, we grow older because we stop playing" George Bernard Shaw

Barbara decided to let go of trying to control the work, trying to keep it within the boundaries it had previously been confined within. Easy to try to control it. Difficult to surrender those boundaries. Lots to learn from Dorothy still. Barbara went on to do some amazingly free work this weekend.

There are many people who find creative success late in life:

Although Canadian artist, Doris McCarthy began painting when she was young, it wasn't until she retired from teaching at 65 that her career began to take off.

Louise Nevelson was in her 50's when she sold her work to three New York City museums and now her art can be seen internationally in over eighty public collections.

Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her family's life in the 1870's and 80's in the acclaimed, "The Little House on the Prairie" series of books for children. She published her first book at the age of 65.

Currently I'm reading the book called, " The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany (begins her life's work) at 72", by Molly Peacock. This is the story of Mary Delany, who at the age of 72, created a new art form, mixed-media collage and in the span of 10 years, she went on to create 985 botanically correct, cut-paper flowers, now at the British Museum.

Here is some of the work from the workshop this past weekend. And this is just workshop work. Wait until they have all practised with this cold wax process.

©Lesha Kokosky

©Brenda Bisiker

©Margaret Peter

©Therese Chatelain

©Wendy Neilson

Talking about Art

2011-03-17T08:39:00.000-07:00

Rebecca Crowell and me in my studio in front of one of my new paintings.

For the past three days I've had my friend Rebecca Crowell and her husband, Don Ticknor, visiting me from Wisconsin. I met Rebecca last March when I was taking a cold wax workshop from her near Madison Wisconsin. I introduced her to Gallery 133 in Toronto which is one of the galleries where I show my work. The gallery invited her to bring some of her work up to Toronto, which prompted this visit.

Besides talking continuously about our work and our teaching, and discovering that we have the same sense of hilarity, we spent two days visiting galleries in Toronto, especially in the Distillery District and Yorkville. I especially liked the work of Maya Bar and Ram Samocha at Julie M. Gallery, Ed Bartram's Rockscapes and a Stu Oxley monoprint at Mira Godard Gallery, Leonard Cohen's drawings at Drabinsky Gallery and Zhang He's deliciously thick oil paintings at Odon Wagner Gallery.

cold wax + oil: new work

2011-03-03T10:58:00.000-08:00


#1101 30x30" cold wax/oil on panel © 2011 Janice Mason Steeves

This is my first painting of 2011. The influence of Spain and my artist residency at Can Serrat seems to be appearing in my work unexpectedly. Playing with colour so freely during the residency was inspirational and combined with my interest in layered, weathered and decaying surfaces, I'm heading toward a new body of work.

This non-objective work requires that I completely surrender to the process, not knowing from moment to moment where the work will take me. It rides on the back of many years of painting but demands letting all of that go. It is a demanding force, like "duende". Angeles Arrien in her book, "The Second Half of Life", says that the 'igniting power of fire that comes from the depths of the human spirit, is known cross-culturally by different names: as duende in Spain's flamenco; verissimo in Italian opera; fado in Portugal; tango in Argentina; sandade in Latin America; and jazz in America. All are forms of passion that hinge on the ability to hold the tension between discipline and soulful expression in creative form.

Edward Hirsh in writing about Federico Garcia Lorca says, "Duende rises through the body. It burns through the soles of a dancer's feet, or expands in the torso of a singer. It courses through the blood and breaks through a poet's back like a pair of wings. It smokes through lungs; it scorches the voice; it magnetizes the words. It is risky and deathward leaning."

Renann Isaacs Gallery Show: "Seeing Red"

2011-02-19T04:14:00.000-08:00

Renann Isaacs Contemporary Art is a beautiful new gallery at 31 Quebec Street in Guelph, Ontario. I was invited to show in Renann's second exhibition, "Seeing Red", which opened February 5th, during a heavy snowstorm. The snow didn't stop the artists and collectors from attending. The gallery was packed, right up until closing time. With a terrific art program at the nearby University of Guelph, the area is rich with talented artists like Ron Shuebrook, Stu Oxley, Tammy Radcliff, Pearl Van Geest and Cheryl Ruddock. I was delighted to be included in this exhibition and was even more delighted when my painting: Poem Series 1065 sold before the opening!


Poem Series 1065 cold wax/oil on panel © Janice Mason Steeves 2010

The exhibition " Seeing Red" runs until March 30th. Call the gallery at 519-821-9068

Pilgrimage and Painting: Influences on my Work

2011-01-30T16:57:00.000-08:00

With two artist’s talks scheduled for late January, and two more in the spring, I spent the early part of the month learning Power Point, which may seem easy to those who have newer computers with no internal glitches. Let’s say it was a challenge for me and for my computer.

In the end, once I figured out how the program worked, and with the help of my daughter and her husband as well as the use of their computer, the whole process turned out to be incredibly enjoyable. It gave me the chance to look at the hundreds of photos I take every time I travel, reliving them and considering what I learned on each trip. Each feeds into my life journey and the trajectory of my work. I loved the creativity involved in putting the photos together, making a slideshow movie, and adding in music that I had brought back from each trip. I decided to call the talk: Pilgrimage and Painting: Influences on my Work

The idea of going on pilgrimages began for me before I had actually named the trips as such. Pilgrimage is defined as a journey to a sacred centre, and/or life viewed as a journey.

In 1994, at the Ontario College of Art and Design, I was enrolled in a class called “Symbol”. Our assignment was to find an important personal symbol on which to focus our work for the semester. I struggled with this. That same fall, I went to Greece for two weeks. On the island of Crete, I became obsessed with the huge, ancient, pottery vessels that were still standing on the archaeological sites. I began actually dreaming of them. One night, I dreamt for the entire night about a light-filled vessel that had a sacred pattern around the edge. When I came home, ‘vessels’ became the obvious symbol that I began to paint in my class. I understood it to be a universal symbol, almost archetypal. That image was a container for many ideas: nurturing; the body; the earth; the spirit. This image continued to feed my work for several years.

I realize now, looking back, that the idea of pilgrimage or journey constantly informs my work, whether directly or indirectly. In this slideshow presentation, I show images of my journey to India with Andrew Harvey, a mystical scholar and author who was born in India and began his spiritual journey there. He led a trip in 2006 called “Shiva’s Dancing Ground” to South India where we visited sacred sites and prayed in incense-filled temples. However my pilgrimage to India really began for me the year before, when I traveled on a tour to North India. The focus was on visiting tourist sights. But India is sacred. You can't avoid it. Each journey there becomes a pilgrimage. We visited the Holy City of Varanasi and plied the Ganges at dawn, lighting small candles in leaf boats that floated away with our blessings inside.

At the nearby burning ghats, we had to walk around a dead woman who was laid out on the pathway, soon to be creamated. She was dressed in a fine sari with a marigold in her mouth. I won't ever forget her. We hide death in our Western culture. Ignore it as though it will go away if we don't look.

At Sarnath, we circumambulated a stupa. Buddha preached his first sermon here after he attained enlightenment. Every stupa contains at the very least a life tree and holy relics:"When a great teacher passes away, his body is no more, but to indicate that his mind is dwelling forever in an unchanging way in the dharmakaya, one will erect a stupa as a symbol of the mind of the buddhas" - HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

SOUTH INDIA

In South India, in 2006, we chanted as we circumambulated the sacred mountain, Mount Arunachala, where holy men, sadhus, begged for food. Mount Arunachala, made famous by Sri Ramana Maharshi, is said to bestow enlightenment and moksha (liberation from reincarnation) to the pilgrim who circumambulates its base. We meditated often each day. The journey became an increasingly swirling experience of incense, chanting, meditation and blessings. I fought to keep my feet on the ground. That feeling continued after I came home. I wasn’t able to paint for months and struggled to integrate what I'd learned there.

“It is not enough that one surrenders oneself. Surrender is to give oneself up to the original cause of one's being. Do not delude yourself by imagining such a source to be some God outside you. One's source is within oneself. Give yourself up to it. That means that you should seek the source and merge in it.” Sri Ramana Maharshi

Doris McCarthy one more time

2011-01-19T07:34:00.000-08:00


Fantasy Iceberg #40 1989 by Doris McCarthy

Today I was reading Robert Genn’s newsletter, where a young woman from Brazil wrote to him saying that she was having difficulty getting back to painting after the death of her grandfather. Robert said how important it was for her to get back to work, it’s what her grandfather would have wanted. He said, “His passing is your gift; it is his breath you continue to breathe, and the brilliance that was within him is now passed on to you. It is a legacy not to be passed up". Robert mentioned how, "We the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Artists need to be aware of the continuum.

Mentioning the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Artists, made me think of the funeral service held yesterday for the young Sgt. Ryan Russell, a member of the Toronto Police Force, who was killed last week in the line of duty. Twelve thousand members of police forces, RCMP and military came to Toronto from across Canada to attend his funeral at the Toronto Convention Centre. The funeral procession wound through the city all morning, arriving at the Convention Centre in the early afternoon. The Lieutenant Governor of Ontario was there. In their very numbers, the police presented a strong, ‘family’ show of support for their fallen member and his young family. It made me somewhat envious of their close sense of comradeship.

As artists we normally work alone in our studios. There is some degree of competition between us as we vie for grants, for our work to be hung in juried exhibitions, for sales in galleries, for public gallery exhibitions. Perhaps it’s our individualistic personalities that create this relative isolation or the nature of our work. Imagine so many other artists from across Canada coming to the funeral of one of us. There were not twelve thousand artists at the funeral of Doris McCarthy last November. She was a 100-year-old icon in the Canadian art world. She enriched the lives of all Canadians with her work and made a huge contribution to the history of Canadian art.

Alan Bryce, who holds the largest private collection of Doris McCarthy’s paintings, opened his exhibition of her work last week at Spazio dell’arte, 400 Eastern Ave. Suite 201, Toronto. The exhibition, called: Honouring Doris McCarthy, A Collector’s Passion runs until February 12, 2011.

In the entranceway you are met by these words of the artist:

“oh, I love the world!

I love nature!

I love creation!”

Doris McCarthy's Inspiration

2010-12-09T11:12:00.000-08:00


Doris McCarthy

In 2001, Doris McCarthy was invited to give the Convocation Address at the University of Toronto's graduation ceremonies, where she received an honourary Doctorate of Law degree. A good friend of Doris's and mine, the portrait artist, Judy Finch attended the ceremony and sent me a copy of Doris's speech. I love Doris's simple, wise advice. I remember her being interviewed on CBC radio one summer when she was 89. She said, with her characteristic enthusiasm, "Every decade is better than the last. I can't wait to be 90!"

"Mr. President, Mr. Chancellor, Members of the Faculty, happy Graduates and all your proud parents and friends who have come to celebrate this landmark occasion, welcome, and thank you for the opportunity I have been given to tell you something that neither your professors nor your parents have had a chance to learn, but that I know because I am old, older than any of them.

This is the wonderful secret I want to share with you. Life gets better and better with every year that passes. Don't be afraid of old age. It has the gifts that are even better than youth. To earn those gifts, start now. And I mean today, this minute. Be aware of who you are, where you are, and why. Look around at this Convocation Hall, designed many years ago to be perfect for this very occasion. Think about the person beside you who has also experienced the disciplines, the new insights, the anxieties and the laughter that have filled your university years. Love that person even if a stranger. Remember the bonds that tie you to your friends and family sitting in the visitor's section, and be thankful that it is all coming together at last. Realize this moment. Savour it. Like every other moment in your life, past or future it is unique. No two moments, even this evening are exactly the same. You are living now, always now! Rejoice in it. Know that you are alive and that you are free, free to choose who you are and who you will become. You have not always been so free. Your parents made decisions for you once. But you are now adults, making your own choices.

One choice most of you are faced with is how you are going to eat and pay the rent in the immediate future. Let me encourage you to do the thing you love doing. What do you do now in your free time, just for the fun of it? What brings you joy?
If you love what you do, you will do it very well, and someone who needs that done, will notice how well you do it and want to pay you to do it. Maybe not very much at first. Maybe very well. But far more important than the money is the satisfaction you get in the work itself. Remember, it is loving your work that is important, not comfort, not security, not public acclaim, but happiness. If every day you are aware of what you are doing and know that you have chosen it because you love it, that is a good life.
If you cannot love the path you have chosen, leave it and start again. There is no disgrace in learning by experience. But to merely endure your work for the sake of money or status, or peer pressure or for any other reason is to squander the most precious treasure of all, your very life. Do you enjoy studying? How about research? Are you happiest when you are making something, a cake, a party, a patio or bookshelf? All the world needs food and lodging. Are you good with small children? Perhaps teaching is for you. Would you rather spend your time with animals, big or little? Is dancing the thing you really long for? Go for it.

Don't, I beg you, settle for a job for the sake of the money or supposed status in it. Never just endure your work. Of course, sometimes there will be drudgery. Embrace it and know that you accept it for the sake of the work itself. On your knees scrubbing the kitchen floor, be thankful for a kitchen, for being able to laugh when you spilled the gravy, for water that comes out of the tap and is already warm, for the person who will come home to a cleaner kitchen even if he or she won't notice.

If you are up a ladder cleaning out the eaves, enjoy the joke when you find apples and acorns that some squirrel has stored there. Relish the sun if it's shining or the challenge of the wind if it is trying to blow you off the ladder. How good to have a house that you can call home and be alive to care for it.

Be aware of now. Teach your friend or your partner to be aware of it too. Create a ritual that lets you share that appreciation of the moment. It might be to join hands as you light the candles on the dinner table and say thank you for the day, for the others at the table, for the weather whatever it is, and say it in your own language and differently every time so that it is really awareness of that unique now. Cataloging the special pleasures of today will make you forget its disappointments. Enjoyment will soon become a habit and every day will be a gift. Start now, and you will know blessing. This blessing is my gift to you on your graduation day.

In closing I offer you the ritual I learned at camp when I was about your age or younger. We used to join hands in a big circle every morning and say it together.

Doris then had everyone stand, hold hands and recite this salutation after her.

Salutation of the Dawn

Listen to the salutation of the dawn.

Look to this day. For it is life, the very life of life.

In its brief course lie all the verities and realities of your existence.

This bliss of growth, the glory of action, the splendour of beauty.

For yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision.

But today well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness, and every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well therefore to this day.

Such is the salutation of the dawn."

Doris McCarthy 1910-2010

2010-12-07T09:21:00.000-08:00

Doris McCarthy

When I was in Can Serrat in Spain, I learned that my old friend, Doris McCarthy died on November 25th at the age of 100. She was an icon in the Canadian art world, honoured and loved for her constant, dedicated focus on painting the landscape of this country that she loved so much.

In 2005, in honour of her 95th birthday, Toronto's acclaimed Amadeus Choir, paid tribute Doris McCarthy in a special multi-media concert - "Amadeus and the Artist - A Portrait of Doris McCarthy" - on October 22 at Yorkminster Park Baptist Church in Toronto. The program featured the world première performance by the Amadeus Choir and the Bach Children's Chorus of 'Salutation of the Dawn' by Canadian composer Eleanor Daley, commissioned by the Amadeus Choir.

Along with three of her friends, I was invited to give a speech about my travels with her. Here's the speech I gave that day.

"It’s not the journey you take with Doris; the adventure is being with her and feeling the largeness of her spirit. Doris has an infectious joy in greeting each new day. She silently whistles as she prepares her art supplies to head outdoors, forever hopeful that TODAY will produce the best painting ever.

In 1993 we shared a magical sailing trip down the east coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, stopping at the abandoned Haida villages, where Emily Carr once painted. On every shore excursion, Doris, then 83, jumped out of the dinghy, set up her equipment and began painting with that determined focus we all admire.

She is a delightful blend of dedicated focus and joyful playfulness. When a couple of us picked up a 10’ long tube of seaweed and began to twirl it like a skipping rope, who should jump into the rope and begin skipping, but young Doris McCarthy.

Doris has such a positive way of being in this world. When I complained on the sailboat of feeling very claustrophobic in my small upper bunk with 6” of air space, Doris jumped up into it and said, “I’ll take it, I don’t mind it a bit.”

My most memorable adventure was our trip to Pond Inlet in 1992, in the dark of Arctic winter. The adventure began before we even arrived there. Between flights on our way to Pond, we took a short walk to stretch our legs. Suddenly we heard our airplane engines revving up. OH NO! All our stuff was on that plane..purses, cameras, even our airline tickets! Everything. We ran onto the tarmac in front of the plane, madly waving our arms and screaming Stop! Stop! Mercifully, the propellers stopped, and the stairs were lowered. As we climbed onto the plane, a small Inuit man, one of the ground crew said sternly to Doris, “Grandma, don’t ever do that again!”

Doris’s attitude toward life continues to inspire me in my life. She is my hero, the kind of person I want to be when I’m 95. She lives in a small body, but her spirit fills this room. I am privileged to know you Doris."

Can Serrat Exhibition: ¨And Then There Were Three¨

2010-11-29T06:24:00.000-08:00

Just three of us left now at Can Serrat. On Saturday we had an exhibition of the work we´ve done while we have been at the residency.

Colores del Monasterio de Montserrat 174x201cm (68x79¨) Janice Mason Steeves 2010

View of the studio/exhibition space

Pinhole Cameras by Natalie McQuade 2010

Natalie McQuade exhibited a video comprised of her black and white photographs of ceramic sidewalk tiles in Barcelona and El Bruc. She also created a sculpture using three Spanish cigar boxes she found here that she made into pinhole cameras.

Erica Scourti´s piece was a video remake of the movie Three Kings.

My painting, called Colores del Monasterio de Montserrat was an edited assemblage of the more than eighty small acrylic/monastery pigment paintings I´ve made while I´ve been here.

The residency is over. It´s getting cold here in the hills of El Bruc overlooking Barcelona. I´ll be happy to get home to central heating. And just happy to get home.

Colores del Monasterio de Montserrat

2010-11-23T10:17:00.000-08:00

Dry Pigments

Before I came to Can Serrat, I had hoped to use local materials in my work. In the first few days here, I found all of these small containers of dry pigments in the upstairs studio. I learned from Marcel that these pigments were used to paint the Monastery of Montserrat when it was restored about five years ago.

Over the weeks I have been here, I have been using these dry pigments mixed with acrylic matte medium on paper. I tore the paper into sheets that are approximately 9x12¨...some are smaller because I used various sizes of watercolour paper. I tore each sheet of paper into eight sections. I´ve consistently worked on this small size, playing with these various pigments, pouring and experimenting with them. I´ve been interested in the colours of Spain...reds, oranges, golds, the colours and shapes of the mountains behind the residency... blue greys, warm greys, oranges, browns and blacks, depending on the time of day. I´ve also been interested in using the circle...the globe representing the universe, that the Black Madonna holds in her hand in the Monastery at Montserrat, and the idea of mosaic tiles that one sees all over Barcelona. In a very casual way, I´m attempting to integrate all of these shapes and colours.

As I sorted through the work the other day, I realized that there were many of the small paintings that didn´t work and I debated about whether I wanted to carry them home. Before they went into the garbage, I tried tossing them onto a white paper on a table and photographing that random assortment. The photos have suggested their own work. The photos of the paintings become the work, or at least they become one of the ways to see these small paintings. I will have some of these photos printed on the same watercolour paper when I go home. Each painting adds to the whole, whether it works individually or not. The white paper becomes part of the work, as do the shadows of the edges.

A new way of seeing.

The Residency Residents

2010-11-20T04:28:00.000-08:00

Erica Scourti at Can Serrat

There are only two other artists here now. The rest have finished their residencies. Can Serrat will close for December. Things are winding down here. But I still have eleven days left and will continue to absorb this area of Cataluña, Montserrat, El Bruc and Barcelona. I´m loving spending time with the other artists and learning about their work. Erica Scourti is an exceptionally creative artist/filmmaker from London, England who works mainly with digital media, and is interested in language/word-based video art. She has recently done a residency at I-Park in Connecticut.

Natalie McQuade at the Museu Nacional d Art de Catalunya

Natalie McQuade is a brilliant multi-media artist from Melbourne, Australia. She incorporates sculpture, sound, installation and printmaking into her work ...among other things. At Can Serrat, among other projects, she is making several pinhole cameras out of found Spanish cigar boxes.

These are two very creative, very exciting young artists and I so much enjoyed sitting with them while they discussed their work. I´d recommend spending some time visiting their websites.

Otto Castillo, Karine Argile, Jessica Hirst, Marcel Sala
Karine and Marcel run Can Serrat

Jessica Hirst and her partner Otto Castillo have just finished their residency here. Jessica is a multi-media artist. Her current work involves considering logos on the clothing we wear. She has created a personal logo and is collecting used or found clothing and applying her Palmer Fishman logo to these items. They are at once hilarious, and yet worthy of consideration. Her blog has photos of her newly introduced line of Palmer Fishman clothing.

Abde Samad Chakour

Abde Samad Chour, from Casa Blanca, Morrocco, works here at the residency.

There are also six cats here at Can Serrat. I´ve only been able to capture three of them. I´m not crazy about cats so this is a test for me to have six cats wandering in and out of bedrooms, dining room, shower....everywhere.........

Bully Boy who bullies the other cats

Moushou the brother of Noor

Noor the friendly one

There are also two resident ghosts at Can Serrat, whom I have not been able to photograph. I guess it is not surprising that there are at least a couple of ghosts here, considering that the building is perhaps 350 years old. One reportedly is a woman who died here in childbirth. The other is a man who hanged himself after gambling away this building which was his home and farm. The male ghost resides in the blue room on te Norwegian student side of the building and has been known to throw objects around the room. On the Can Serrat side we have the quieter, sadder woman who supposedly drifts from room to room. Makes me alittle sleepless I must say.

It all makes for an exciting, eclectic mix of characters and personalities, animals and ghosts.

Second Week Artist Residency

2010-11-11T07:53:00.000-08:00

There are some beautiful hikes nearby the residency that eventually lead to Montserrat. I haven´t quite made it to the base of the mountain yet. The weather here in the more mountainous region of Catalonia has been cool, around 14 degrees and mostly sunny. Great for hiking.

Yesterday I went into Barcelona to meet up with my friend Rebecca Crowell and her husband Don Ticknor from the U.S. We met up at the Fundacion Antoni Tapies where we saw a small number of Tapies pieces and a terrific film about him and his work.. On the lower level of the museum was a retrospective of the work of Anna Maria Maiolino, an Italian-born artist who lives in Brazil.

The Tapies website says that Maiolino´s ¨complex works have developed through a variety of media: poetry, woodcuts, photography, film, performance, sculpture, installation and, above all, drawing. The wide spectrum of subjects, interests and attitudes that underlies her work does not follow a linear development, either in the work itself or in time. Rather, through the diversity of her work, she creates a web where themes and attitudes intertwine while meanings slip between one work and another. ¨

Leaving the work of Tapies and Maiolino, we caught the Metro to Parc Guell to see some of Gaudi´s work.

Parc Guell is a garden complex with architectural elements situated on the hill of el Carmel in the Gràcia district of Barcelona. It was designed by the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and built in the years 1900 to 1914. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Works of Antoni Gaudí"

Rebecca and I in Parc Guell overlooking Barcelona

Heading back to catch the bus to Can Serrat as the sun is going down. My feet are aching.

Visiting Barcelona from Can Serrat

2010-11-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

I spent the day yesterday in Barcelona, which is less than one hour by bus from El Bruc and Can Serrat. Easy access to the city center by Metro. My destination was first, an art supply store...where I wasn´t too impressed by the supply of paint and paper....and then to the CCCB...the Centre de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona. Before I left home I learned that there was an exhibition about the history of Labyrinths at the CCCB which runs until January 2011.

I walked down Las Ramblas, the main pedestrian walkway, on my way to the CCCB. It was bustling with excitement on a warm November day in Barcelona.

A couple dressed up for the crowd as though they were sculptures, and covered with something that looked like clay.

Below is the entrance to the CCCB. The exhibition I went to see was called ¨Through the Labyrinth¨.

This was a kind of video of people walking the labyrinth at Chartres, taken from above.

This part of the exhibition was laid out as a maze, with walls to imitate shrubbery.

Photo of a landscape labyrinth in England.

Back home to Can Serrat in time for dinner..................

Can Serrat, Spain

2010-11-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Barcelona on Saturday October 31 for a one month artist residency at Can Serrat. As we drove toward the town of El Bruc, an enormous rainbow arched over the highway and stayed there for the entire drive to Can Serrat-definitely a good omen.

The residency is located in a little valley at the base of Monserrat-the serrated mountain, or Magic Mountain as it´s called here. The famous pilgrimage site, the Monastery of Montserrat, home of a Black Madonna is located on the other side of these mountains.

I´m here for a month, along with five other artists: one other Canadian, a sculptor from New Brunswick; a film-maker from England; a performance artist from Barcelona via the US, who is here with her partner from Honduras who a mixed media artist; and an artist from Australia. Another American artist, a painter, just left today. Two other artists are coming within the next two weeks.

I went with a couple of the other artists yesterday to visit the monastery at Montserrat. It was a spectacular day....25 degrees in El Bruc, where Can Serrat is located. It was cooler high up in the mountains where the monastery is located.

The other side of the mountain on the way to the Monastery, looking toward the snow-covered Pyrenees in the distance.

The photo above of the Monastery was taken on the winding trail down to the Cave.

Below is the Cave, perched on the edge of the cliff, where the Black Madonna was found.

This image of the Black Madonna, a bronze copy, is in the cave where the original was found. Legend has it that a light came from this cave at night about 800 years ago. Some men climbed up to see what the source of the light was and they discovered the Black Madonna sculpture. They tried to take her from the mountain, but could not move her very far before she became too heavy to carry. They felt this was a sign, and built the Monastery around her.

I stood in line at the Monastery to touch the hand of the Black Madonna. One million pilgrims per year visit this sacred Madonna to touch her hand and pray for blessings.

Poems from the Moon Garden Opening

2010-10-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

Poem Series: 10110 12x12" oil/cold wax on panel © Janice Mason Steeves 2010

My exhibition, Poems from the Moon Garden opened on Friday night at Abbozzo Gallery in Oakville, Ontario. The show continues until November 7th. Here are a few of the installation shots before and during the show.

Abbozzo Gallery Owner- Ineke Zigrossi

With artist friend, Shirley Williams on the right

My painting of the past several years has been strongly influenced by the archetypal concept of pilgrimage. This current work has increasingly become more experimental and exploratory, turning inward and moving toward abstraction. As I began this body of work, I decided to drop all my known reference points—to step off the edge of what is familiar to me. In Buddhism, this attitude of setting aside, for the time being, preconceived ideas, beliefs and expectations is known as 'beginner's mind". Beginner's mind is like a child’s mind, just present to explore and observe and see things as they are.

As time went on, I returned to a combination of abstraction and representation, each influencing the other. Images of flowers in a moonlight garden came back into my work. The garden at night is a metaphor for life and death—which are inextricably bound to each other—and the creativity that comes out of that darkness. The darkness is what mystics call the ‘inside’ of things, the essence of things. Meister Eckhart, a German theologian and philosopher observed, “The ground of the soul is dark”. It is where the true self lies. The idea of walking in a garden in the moonlight is like a dream, or a journey through the underworld.

This new body of work approaches the painting surface in an entirely intuitive way. I lay colour fields of oil paint mixed with cold wax medium, on a wooden substrate, layer upon layer. I embed poetry and songs into the surface that they might live inside the work. The cold wax and oil paint, applied layer upon layer imitates the way that life writes upon us year after year, with its scrapes and healings, traumas and joys. It holds these memories as our bodies do, as our lives do.

Wax Workshop

2010-10-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

This past weekend my studio was filled with nine enthusiastic and industrious artists learning about the cold wax/oil process. The air was filled with excitement. The artists ranged from those with almost no experience at all to professionals, so I had a lot of explaining to do!

One of my goals was to encourage the artists to play, to experiment with a new technique and just let go. So often we get hung up on goals, on making a product, on being 'perfect'.
I read to them from Eric Maisel's book, "Coaching the Artist Within", where he talks about the creative process. "To create, we have to take the bad with the good. We're bound to write bad paragraphs along with good ones. That's the eternal law. We can get rid of those bad paragraphs later on , but first we must write them. Otherwise we won't write anything at all . If we try to write only the good paragraphs, we are three-quarters of the way toward paralysis. The name that we've coined for this problems is "perfectionism". But it isn't that people afflicted this way are striving to be perfect. They are just striving to be good, which would be no problem at all, if only they also had internal permission to be bad."

I also read to them from the book, Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. "If you think good work is somehow synonymous with perfect work, you are headed for big trouble. Art is human; error is human; ergo art is error. Inevitably, your work (like uh, the preceding syllogism...) will be flawed. Why? Because you're a human being, and only human beings, warts and all, make art. Without warts it is not clear what you would be, but clearly you wouldn't be one of us."

Because I was their teacher, I gave them permission to make bad art.

They tried.


© Christine Montague

In aiming to create bad work, I think that everyone loosened up and let go of being 'good' for a while. And they made some very exciting work.

One of the participants, Christine Montague talks more about the workshop in her blog post.

"Creativity is about play and a kind of willingness to go with your intuition. It's crucial to an artist. If you know where you are going and what you are going to do, why do it? Frank Gehry

Cold Wax/Oil Monotypes

2010-08-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

I'm having fun experimenting with making cold wax and oil monotypes on paper and had some interesting results today. Although my work has become very non-objective this summer, these monotypes seemed to work well with an image.

I was teaching this technique in my workshop and have decided to experiment further with it.

©2010 Janice Mason Steeves
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves." Carl Jung

Oil and Wax Workshop

2010-08-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I had a wonderfully enthusiastic and intense group of students for my Oil and Wax workshop at my studio. Here are some images of the studio cleaned up for the workshop, with some of my new work on the walls. I've been working long, long hours, almost obsessively this summer, creating a new body of work that is becoming non-objective. It's been an incredibly powerful summer of work. I read once in the book, "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving.....and this is not a quote but a remembering...that if you stand in the way of the gods, they will go with you. I feel like I have been swept along this summer in a wind so strong that I've had no choice but to go with it. I'm getting ready for my show at Abbozzo Gallery in Oakville which opens October 22nd.

But meanwhile it was a fabulous class here at the studio. Much sharing and learning happened and some really exciting work was produced.

We talked during the workshop about the difficulties of being an artist, about the courage it takes to keep going, to keep experimenting and growing; about getting back to the studio after a long absence from illness.

At the end of the workshop, I read them this quote by Martha Graham from the book, "The Life and Work of Martha Graham" by Agnes de Mille.

"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action: and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. You must keep that channel open. It is not for you to determine how good it is, nor how valuable. Nor how it compares with other expressions. It is for you to keep it yours, clearly and directly."

Modern Works/New Artists

2010-06-21T06:08:00.000-07:00

The group show, Modern Works/New Artists opened on Friday June 19th at Agnes Bugera Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta. I couldn't be at the opening but Edmonton friends took this photo for me. Here's a closeup shot of the painting in the window.

Night Garden 15 42x48" Oil/wax on panel ©2010 Janice Mason Steeves

I am embedding a Rumi poem in many of the pieces. One of the poems I love is entitled, “Bend, Tend, Disappear“ from the book The Illuminated Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks.

"This is how you change

when you go to the orchard

where the heart opens:

You become

fragrance and the light

that burning oil gives off."

Show opens in Edmonton

2010-06-13T13:23:00.000-07:00

I am delighted to say that Agnes Bugera Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta is now representing my work. Four of my recent paintings will be part of a group show called: Modern Works-New Artists, which opens on Saturday, June 19th.
Here is a close-up of the piece that is on the invitation:

"Night Garden" Opens in Calgary

2010-05-04T09:03:00.000-07:00

Kamaria ©2010 Janice Mason Steeves oil/wax on panel

My exhibition, Night Garden, opened at Wallace Galleries in Calgary, Alberta on Saturday, April 24. The show runs until May 8th. I flew out to Calgary for the opening. This very beautiful gallery with its floor to ceiling glass wall is located in downtown Calgary at 500-5th Avenue S.W. All of the paintings in the exhibition can be viewed on the Wallace Galleries website or my website.

The day was beautiful and balmy in the morning but just after the show opened at 2pm, the weather turned. It began to rain. Shortly afterward the temperature dropped and it started to snow! Big, fat wet snowflakes. A couple of days later, Calgary was hit with 40cm of snow. I was grateful that it didn't happen during my opening.

I have lots of family in western Canada and almost all of them came to Calgary for the opening- from Edmonton, Vernon, Salmon Arm, Red Deer and Winnipeg. And old friends came from Edmonton, Banff and Calgary. What a fabulous show of support!
Thanks to them all. It was a wonderful reunion and a terrific opening for my first show in Calgary.

Courage in Art

2010-02-21T07:01:00.000-08:00

Requiem ©Janice Mason Steeves 2010

This is one of my new paintings that will be in my show at Wallace Galleries in Calgary, AB from April 24 to May 8, 2010.

I have written a number of articles about changing direction in art. It's topic that interests me because it happens to me now and again so I enjoy reading articles about other artists' thoughts on this. There was an article in the Artdaily newsletter this week about the work of Therese Oulton with a comment on her changing styles. Her work is being shown at Marlborough Fine Art in London, England.

"Those who are familiar with Thérèse’s work will be initially surprised by the apparent change of direction that her work has taken. In place of the large scale abstract compositions of the recent past, she is exhibiting here a new series of 24 small format landscapes. The artist, however, sees this new body of work as representing the continuation of her exploration of the various themes which have always been of interest to her: light, surface, texture, geography and landscape.

Describing these new, smaller, paintings in her profound introduction to the catalogue, "Brief Notes on a Change of Identity", Thérèse writes: “During the long period inching my way into these new paintings, visitors to the studio brought up various questions, reflections, comments here recorded as best I can - fragments, some jotted down at the time some not, so decidedly unreliable. Considering the lack of any transitional works marking the route from the ‘old self’, my nerves about their showing were nearly always redundant. More visitors seemed to claim there was no change, that they were still recognisably, coherently mine. Was I to take this as heartening proof that identity languishes somewhere beyond ‘styles of radical will’, or despondent that I hadn’t achieved the desired and revolutionary shift into the being another person, another painter."

Is it wanting to become another person, another painter that pushes an artist forward, to use new materials to work in new directions? For me, I have a sense when the energy of the work or the series is waning. I like to work in a long series. It helps me explore a subject deeply. But the energy subsides after a time and a vague restlessness enters until a new idea comes or a new method of working. There is fear in that change of direction. I think it takes some form of courage to be a painter.

Georgia O'Keeffe in the documentary, "Georgia O'Keeffe: A Life in Art, said "It takes courage to be a painter. I always felt I walked on the edge of a knife. On this knife I might fall off on either side. But I'd walk it again. So what. So what if you do fall off. I'd rather be doing something I really wanted to do."

"To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself."
~ Soren Kierkegaard

Night Garden

2010-02-16T10:11:00.000-08:00

Carrizo © 2010 Janice Mason Steeves

I think one of the things I love best about painting is play. I love constantly trying out new techniques and materials and using them to push my work into new and unexpected directions.

Robert Genn in one of his recent newsletters, suggested a project encouraging play. He encourages an artist to: "Line up a hundred or so small inexpensive panels, papers or canvases and have them ready to go. Give yourself a more limited palette--perhaps half your normal range. Put all reference material and prior works out of sight. If this is not possible, work in a new environment such as a hotel room or friend's cottage. In preparation for starting the program, bring yourself to a mentally uncluttered, dream-like state. Now, over a relatively short period of time, fill the first support with a limited number of strokes. Get your subject matter from the deep well of your memory. Don't finish, move on to the next."

I think I'll try that, but meanwhile, I have been playing, and my work is branching out in new directions. I've been working lately with cold wax medium. When I was in Santa Fe last fall I saw the wonderful work of Rebecca Crowell in Darnell Fine Art on Canyon Road. Her beautifully poetic and understated abstractions are created with cold wax medium. Always interested in learning new techniques that I can incorporate into my own work, I contacted Rebecca and have emailed back and forth with her. I've also signed up for a workshop with her in Wisconsin this spring. When she sent me the list of supplies required, I went right out and bought the lot. And after she kindly replied to a few of my questions, I'm off and running with my own version of paintings using cold wax medium. After trying to work like Rebecca for a number of unsuccessful paintings, the method finally incorporated itself into my work and the painting above is one of the first ones that I am happy with. I found it quite astonishing that my imagery has gone back to pull from my older work-images of flowers. Only this time it is revisiting an old image with different eyes.

I'm preparing for a show at Wallace Galleries in Calgary, Alberta, which opens April 24th. I'm calling the show Night Garden.

The Black Madonna: My Journey

2010-02-07T06:10:00.000-08:00

I've begun doing more and more research on the Black Madonna, spurred on by my upcoming artist residency near Montserrat next fall. I realize though, that I've been interested in the Black Madonna for many years, although I'm not a Catholic or attached to any particular faith. I'm interested mostly in the dark aspect of her.

Matthew Fox, is an American Episcopal priest and theologian. He is an exponent of Creation Spirituality, a movement grounded in the mystical philosophies of medieval visionaries, Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart and Nicolas of Cusa. He has written more than 22 books which have sold millions of copies.

In his essay, called "Welcome: The Return of the Black Madonna", Fox says that the "Black Madonna calls us to darkness. Darkness is something we need to get used to again-the 'Enlightenment' has deceived us into being afraid of the dark and distant from it. Meister Eckhart observes that the 'ground of the soul is dark'. Thus to avoid the darkness is to live superficially, cut off from one's ground, one's depth. The Black Madonna invites us into the dark and therefore into our depths. This is what the mystics call the 'inside' of things, the essence of things. This is where Divinity lies. It is where the true self lies. It is where illusions are broken apart and the truth lies."

I have come across a number of websites and a lot of information about the Black Madonna and realized that my interest and research was turning into something more than I had originally intended. In an effort to learn more about her myself, I hope to write a series of blog posts from time to time, called The Black Madonna: My Journey.

I'll reread my copy of the book "The Cult of the Black Virgin" by Ean Begg, and also reread China Galland's book, "Longing for Darkness, Tara and the Black Madonna" and report back in on more books and sites that I've come across.

Millions of people across the world make annual pilgrimages to Black Madonna sites. Two million/year visit the monastery at Montserrat and that is only one of nearly 250 sites of Black Madonna images throughout the world.

Artist Residency

2010-02-03T15:00:00.001-08:00

I had some exciting news last week. I've been accepted to do an artist residency in Can Serrat, Spain for next fall. It's about 45km from Barcelona. There are a couple of websites devoted to artist residencies. The one I used is called Res Artis.

What mainly drew me to this area of Spain was my interest in seeing the Black Madonna in the monastery at Montserrat, about a three hour uphill hike from Can Serrat. This famous site of holy visions became a place of religious pilgrimage and has been for centuries, possibly going back to pre-Christian times.

"The history of Montserrat is fascinating and started in 880 when a small group of shepherd children saw a bright light descending from the sky in the Montserrat mountains. In the same moment the children heard angels singing and the music filled their hearts with a radiant joy.
Overwhelmed by the experience the children ran home to frantically recall the experience to their parents. The parents were sceptical but knew their children were trustworthy and honest and so they went to where the children had experienced the visions to see if they could see what all the fuss was about.
For the whole month following the first visitation the parents were also witness to the same heavenly experiences and were left with only one conclusion. The visions were a sign from God.
A local vicar was brought to the scene and witnessed the same experiences as the children and parents. The visions occurred in the same location in a cave on Montserrat mountain. When this cave was explored by the religious elders of the community they found an image of the Virgin Mary. And from that moment on the cave became a holy sanctuary for religious pilgrims.
Today the site of the visions has been marked by a Holy Grotto on the mountain. You can walk to the Holy Grotto and see first hand where these events took place. The Holy Grotto has now been ordained a holy place and is visited by pilgrims and curious onlookers from all over the world."

I am excited to go. I'm reading up on the Montserrat Monastery, the Black Madonna and Barcelona.

Perfect Red

2010-01-24T04:21:00.000-08:00

My friend the author Jane Lind recently launched her latest book, "Perfect Red, the Life of Paraskeva Clark" published by Cormorant Books . Jane's mission is to bring to light the work of Canadian women artists, as witnessed by her first book, "Joyce Wieland: Artist on Fire" which was published in 2001 and was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award in 2002.

Perfect Red is the biography of Paraskeva Clark who was born in 1898 into a working class family in Russia. Educated as an artist in the 20's after the the 1917 Russian Revolution, her work was inspired by the social and political conditions in her country. After the tragic death of her husband in a swimming accident, she moved to Paris with her young son. In Paris, Paraskeva met Philip Clark, a Canadian accountant, and after a two-year correspondence courtship, Philip came to London to marry Paraskeva. The pair then traveled to Canada to begin their life together. I don't think Philip had any idea how his life would be turned upside down. Paraskeva was a tiny, feisty and opinionated woman, who quickly moved into the inner circles of the art world in Toronto, rubbing shoulders with the greats in Canadian art of the time; such as Carl Schaefer, Frances Loring, Florence Wyle, Andre Bieler, A.Y Jackson, and Bertram Brooker among others. Flouting the staunch English mores of Toronto in 30's and 40's, Paraskeva acted as she wished, speaking loudly if she wished, dressed as she wished and slept with whoever she wished. She and Norman Bethune had several brief flings. Underlying her life though was great sadness. Her son Ben became a schizophrenic in his early 20's, and was ever after unable to live by himself. His welfare was always a deep concern and worry for Paraskeva.

Paraskeva become an influential Canadian artist and is known mainly for her portraits, still-lifes and landscapes. One part of her story I found so interesting, was the constant paradox in her life: she came from a working-class background yet lived as the wife of a successful accountant in the prestigious Rosedale area of Toronto. As if in deference to her working class heritage, she refused to drive a car and walked downtown every day, as had been the custom in Europe, to do her daily grocery shopping, yet complained about not having enough time to paint. It was as though she was torn apart with this constant condundrum. I feel that this inner conflict, as well as her constant worry about her son Ben, showed itself in the intense emotional depth of her work.

Sadly for Paraskeva, the 50's came and with the times, came Abstract art, a form she could not relate to. She felt left out, passed over, and although it didn't happen overnight, this previously strong and feisty woman gradually withdrew from making art. Jane Lind has brought her back to life in this wonderful biography.

Pushmi-Pullyu

2010-01-17T06:14:00.000-08:00

It's been weeks since I've posted on my blog. I find December a disorganized and frazzled month. I get distracted at Christmas and it's all I can do to get into my studio. At the beginning of January though, I jumped back into my work. I've been painting as well as applying for international artist residencies.

I find each new year invigorating yet I begin to rethink my work, where it's going and what I'd like to accomplish during the next year.

I remember reading Dr. Dolittle to my children when they were small. I loved the Pushmi-Pullyu. An imaginary Pushmi-Pullyu sometimes comes to sit on my shoulder at the beginning of a new year and chuckles into my ear. Part of me appreciates it. The Pushmi side keeps wanting to push me forward in my work, not letting me relax into complacency, goading me on. Part of me can't stand the discomfort that brings, challenging me to find new ways to work.

I've been taking up the challenge, trying some new techniques, working more abstractly.....I'm playing.

I might not post those images for a while yet.

Meanwhile the Pullyu part is also at work. I am feeling the pressure of creating work for my solo exhibition at Wallace Galleries in Calgary at the end of April. It's the artist's paradox. Do I stay with the work that is feeling comfortable or do I play and stretch?

G.K. Chesterton says: "The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground".

Rock Art

2009-11-22T08:20:00.000-08:00

I was recently in Arizona and New Mexico, visiting friends and looking at lots of fabulous art in the galleries there.

Some of the most amazing artwork I saw- the origins of painting-were the pictographs of the Verde Valley estimated to be 1200 years old. Pictographs are paintings or drawings made on rock with colours made from mineral pigments and natural dyes from plants. The final few miles to get to the Palataki Red Cliffs out of Sedona were on dirt roads. There we saw the adobe dwellings and the pictographs of the Singua people.

The photo of the pictograph with the jagged line with light grey triangles below is believed to be an image of the mountain range behind. The sun on the summer solstice rises above the mountain at exactly the spot where the apex of one of these grey triangles points in the pictograph.

We also visited the Deer Valley Rock Art Center outside of Phoenix, where over 1500 petroglyphs, or rock carvings, were discovered in 1980, when a dam was being built to control flooding on Skunk Creek. Radiocarbon dating of petroglyphs at this site resulted in ages that range from about 700 years to more than 10,000 years ago.

No one is certain of the meaning of pictographs and petroglyphs. Certainly to do with communication of some kind. Some might indicate religious activity, some might indicate hunting. I wonder how the art work of today will be interpreted in another 10,000 years, if there is no accompanying artist's statement?

Daimons and Myths

2009-10-30T15:34:00.000-07:00

vas Hermetis: 1, 2 3 each 4'x6" encaustic on panel ©2009 Janice Mason Steeves

I've named this series, vas Hermetis, after the Alchemical term for the symbolic Grail, a universal vessel of transformation. I'm reading two books at the same time right now. One is The Grail Legend by Emma Jung and Marie Louise Von Franz. They say that, "in nearly all mythologies there is a miraculous vessel. Sometimes it dispenses youth and life, at other times it possesses thee power of healing, and occasionally, as with the mead cauldron of the Nordic Ymir, inspiring strength and wisdom are to be found in it. Often, especially as a cooking pot, it effects transformations; by this attribute it achieved exceptional renown as the vas Hermetis of alchemy." From the Jungian school of psychology, these two women present this legend as a living myth that is profoundly relevant to modern life.

The other book I'm reading is The Demon and the Angel, Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration by Edward Hirsch. Hirsch writes about the concept of duende, "that mysterious, highly potent power of creativity that results in a work of art"....and describes writers that 'wrestle with darkness" such as Federico Garcia Lorca, Yeats, Emerson, Blake, T.S.Eliot and painters like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Robert Motherwell, among others.

"Yeats", says Hirsh, "was powerfully attracted to the notion that, as he expressed it when writing about Shakespeare, the Greeks 'considered that myths are the activities of the Daimons, and that the Daimons shape our characters and our lives.' He fancied the idea that for each of us there existed one archetypal story, a single explanatory myth, which, if we but only understood it, would clarify all that we said and did and thought."

These paintings will be available at Linda Lando Fine Art in Vancouver at the end of November.

Toronto International Art Fair (TIAF)

2009-10-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

On Friday I went to the TIAF with my artist friend Shirley Williams to spend the day at the Toronto Convention Centre and check out the show. There were 82 exhibitors, mostly Canadian, many from Toronto and Montreal. There were several galleries from the US--New York, Chicago and Minneapolis--and a few international galleries from London, Madrid, Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, and Antwerp.

I was surprised at the number of representational works in the Art Fair. I haven't gone for a few years and I found the fair to be very different, not nearly as edgy as in previous years, although there was lots of abstract work as well. I noticed that there were a good number of sales and when we asked, the galleries mentioned that it was larger works that were selling and they seemed pleased with the number of sales. Is the recession over then?

Here is some of the work that I liked:

Galerie Lacerte, Quebec City
Jean-Robert Drouillard
Le balle est partie vers toi II
wood and acrylic
63x28x16"

Susan Hobbs Gallery, Toronto
Kevin Yates
Main Street 2009
Bronze, painted wood
20x15x15"

(wall mounted)

Dale Chihuly Installation

My favorite:

Purchased by the Art Gallery of Ontario:

Cal Lane
Love Rug 2008
Petroleum Barrel, Plasma Cut

from Art Mur
Montreal

and below
Cal Lane
Wheelbarrow
Private Collection

My favorite dress at the show, just like one I had in the 60's only I wore mine quite differently then.

Writing an Artist's Statement

2009-10-22T10:55:00.000-07:00

Detail: River of Longing 8 24x80" oil on panel ©2009 Janice Mason Steeves

How often have I rewritten my artist's statement over the years? Endless times. It's a work-in-progress. As my painting changes, I have to rewrite it. As I complete another grant application or apply for a residency or have an exhibition, I have to rewrite it. Although I enjoy writing, working on my artist's statement feels like a form of torture. There is something about the process that is incredibly difficult. It requires objectivity to write it. I paint intuitively. I don't conceptualize the work or the project beforehand, which makes it difficult to be objective.

A couple of years ago, I bought an e-book from Alyson Stanfield called "The Relatively Pain-Free Artist's Statement. It took me through a 20-day lesson plan. It's step-by-step approach to looking at your art and your life, which is helpful for any artist at any stage in their careers. At the end of it I had a much-improved artist's statement. Thing is, it's a never-ending process.

Writing an artist's statement is in a way like writing a mission statement. It's writing about what you want your work to be, what you want others to see in the work, what you mean to say visually and it pushes my comfort level to expose the depth of my work through words. I find that my work is in a sense beyond my words, it is ahead of my words. My words have to catch up to my work. I search to find the words to describe it and they come only reluctantly and over time. It's as if I'm getting to know my own work through the process of writing about it. The more I write about it and the more I read other artists' statements, the clearer I can be about my own work. I recently rewrote my artist's statement yet again, at the prompting of my artist friend, Anne-Marie Kornachuk, who offered to read my statement, sent me hers, and then offered a few penetrating questions to nudge me in my rewriting. I worked on it off and on for a couple of days. Here's the latest version. It describes as clearly as I can be at this time what my work is about and what I intend.

Order of Canada

2009-10-14T17:03:00.000-07:00

I was visiting my home town of Winnipeg last week and I learned that one of my good friends from University of Manitoba days, Susan Glass, was awarded The Order of Canada last July. The Order of Canada is an honour for merit. It is the highest such order administered by the Governor General on behalf of the Queen. Created in 1967, to coincide with the centennial of Canada's Confederation, the three-tiered order was established as a fellowship that recognizes the achievement of outstanding merit or distinguished service by Canadians, through life-long contributions in every field of endeavour, and who made a major difference to Canada, as well as the efforts made by non-Canadians who have made the world better by their actions. Membership is thus accorded to those who exemplify the order's Latin motto taken from Hebrews 11:16, desiderantes meliorem patriam, meaning "they desire a better country."

Susan's contributions have mostly been in the Arts. She is a western Canadian at heart. After attending schools in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Vancouver, BC, New York, NY, and Winnipeg, Manitoba, she attended the University of Manitoba graduating with a bachelor of commerce degree in 1967.   In 2000 Susan chaired the third annual Canadian Arts Summit held at The Banff Centre, after having participated in the first two fledgling years as the Summit began to take shape as a forum for the 40 largest arts organizations in Canada.

Serving on the Board of Directors of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet for 13 years, she chaired that board from 1995 to 1998 and continues to chair its Major Gifts Committee.Her continuing degree of commitment to that organization reflects her belief in the integral pride of place that the RWB occupies in the image and identity of Winnipeg.  

Susan currently is a national governor of the Shaw Festival. Other voluntary directorships have included the University of Manitoba board of governors, St. Boniface General Hospital, St. Boniface General Hospital Research Foundation, Canadian Club of Winnipeg, and the University of Manitoba Alumni Association. She is also involved with fundraising for the Plug In Institute for Contemporary Art in Winnipeg in their new building campaign.

I know most of this from "Googling" my friend. She is down-to-earth and extremely humble and rarely mentions what she is doing, always deeply interested in her friends and their families. In fact I learned of her award by chance from another friend who mentioned it in passing.

I write about Susan to honour her in my own small way and say thanks to her for all the work she does in her city and in Canada.

More thoughts on changing directions in your work

2009-09-25T10:29:00.000-07:00

The other evening, I went to the opening of Will Gorlitz's exhibition at the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre in Guelph, Ontario. Gorlitz is a Professor in the Studio Art Program in the Department of Fine Art and Music at the University of Guelph and a veteran Canadian figurative painter who "sets out to unsettle our vision", says Richard Rhodes, editor of Canadian Art magazine. See a brief video tour of a 2008 Gorlitz exhibition.

I found it interesting to hear him talk briefly about his work at the opening. In my last couple of blog posts, I wrote some thoughts about changing directions in my artwork and asked how to recognize when we need to change directions or how to stay true to our own intuition. Will mentioned that when he graduated from art college, that he had noticed how it seemed an important thing for an artist to find their path and to stick with it. He decided right then to challenge that 'convention', and try to make many different bodies of work.

When this retrospective was offered to him, he said that he wondered how they would hang so many different bodies of work. But after the show was hung and he stood looking at it, he realized that there was a connection between the various works.

It makes me wonder if we have a certain mark or way of making artwork that is ours, even if the bodies of work seem unconnected. And looking back at our work over time, if we simply make art long enough, do the connections become more apparent?

Changing directions in your work

2009-09-23T09:12:00.000-07:00

After writing my last blog post, I was interested to read the blog post of Susan Buret, an Australian artist who commented on my last post, The Road Not Taken. Susan said that she has had three no sale shows but that her work later won awards or was acquired for well respected collections. She mentioned that she has recently begun a new body of work which is in its formative stages and questions whether she should change directions.

Her article has me thinking again about the situation. It's a paradox. On one hand is the flood of excitement of creating new work but then there is a huge effort required to get that new work out into the world. On the other hand when you stay with a body of work or a subject, there is an opportunity to go inward and deeper into the work, while continuing to work in a way that is recognized.

There is something so vulnerable about a new body of work. I remember many years ago when my first pottery instructor squealed with excitement at my very first thrown pot. It went up in layers, all wobbly and bendy. But it was such an important achievement for me who had been working on throwing a pot for weeks at my night school class. The teacher came running over and let out a yell of excitement. He thought it was so fantastic! I thought it was terrific that I finally did this, but I also thought it was a mess. It was all wrong! He loved it. He said that he would never be able to make pots like this one any more. He'd passed that rough vulnerable place of early learning and he could never visit there again. I haven't ever forgotten that teaching.

Should an artist continue to work in the same way and keep exploring it?
For me, who likes to paint images, I often wonder if I should find new images to paint, as I tend to paint one image again and again in a repetitive, meditative manner. I do paint some other images, like waterlilies and flowers. But the main image I keep going back to is the image of the 'vessel'. I keep finding new ways of painting it that hold my interest and excitement and sustain me. My friend, and artist, Robert Marchessault, paints trees and has done so for years. I can tell by the beautiful energy in his paintings that he continues to find more and more to say about them. Bob told me the other day when I was talking to him about this very topic, to just notice if you are still excited about the work, does it still interest you to do it.

If it doesn't hold the interest for you as an artist any longer, it's time to make the change. That's what makes your work true.

The Road Not Taken

2009-09-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

The other day I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine who is an artist. We were talking about our work. She’s discouraged because she sold only one painting at her last exhibition in the summer and she’s having a difficult time getting back into the studio.

It reminded me of a similar thing that happened to me about four years ago. I had been to India that winter and came home full of the colours of India. Actually India is a pretty drab colour, shades of grey and mud. But the women’s saris are stunningly brilliant colours that glow against that background of grey and mud. I took hundreds of photos and came home saturated, eager to work with those colours.

I had been using encaustic in my work for about eight years at that time and had just taken a week long workshop at R&F Handmade Paints in New York, which included photo transfer work among other things. The photo transfer work and encaustic and India seemed to come together for me in a series of electric-coloured paintings. I didn’t even contemplate trying to incorporate the colours of India into my usual work. I don’t know why.

I worked on this series for maybe a year, enthusiastically making lime green, turquoise blue, candy pink and scarlet red paintings that had scraped away images or photo transfers on them or paintings that looked like an exposed filmstrip. I was pushing myself into new territory and it was scary and also fun.

I showed them in a solo show I had previously organized at my gallery in Toronto. I had worked hard and was excited about showing this new work. There was a good turnout at the show, but not one sale. And in fact, in the ensuing years, probably only three paintings have sold from the series. The paintings were tried in other galleries, all with the same result.

I was so discouraged I decided to stop painting for a year, the first time I had stopped work in over twenty years of painting. I told my galleries this, and much to my surprise, they all thought that was a good idea! I guess I’d been hoping they would say something like, “Oh no Jan, what will we do without your work?”.

I filled the time with reading and traveling and doing what? I don’t know. It was like a retired person, who fills their days easily but can’t say what they do. I did that. Until I grew tired of it and after a trip to China, searching for wild peonies in the mountains of Tibet with Chinese botanists, I was excited and inspired to get back to work. I went back to old ways of working, painting in oils on wooden panels. I gave up encaustic for what would be five years. I didn’t incorporate any of what I’d learned by experimenting with brightly coloured and layered surfaces for a year.

My friend asked me, “What if you had kept working that way, I wonder what your work would look like today? That thought has followed me all week since our conversation.

What if?

But what if I’d studied Medicine in University? I wouldn’t be an artist today.

What if I’d taken that Art Therapy course that I was enrolled in but dropped out of at the very last moment to stay home instead and devote myself to being a full time painter?

I’m glad I gave up that way of painting. It was an expansive time in many ways and then the following year that I took off was a very inward time of reflection, mediation and travel. I think the two years are connected, the outward and the inward. But I had come to the end of that cycle of work even though I had thrown it off in an angry way. It couldn’t sustain me.

In that year of reflection, I spent time reconsidering what is important to me in my work. Did I leave that work because I didn’t have many sales? Did I leave it because other people didn’t seem to really like it? How important is that to me? Can an artist function without any sort of acknowledgment? Or had I just run out of enthusiasm for the work and was it time to move on?

What paths have you not taken?

Beauty

2009-09-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

It is with great embarrassment that I admit that I finally visited the recently renovated Art Gallery of Ontario yesterday for the first time! Designed by the world renowned architect, Frank Gehry, it has been open for almost a year! This is Toronto-born Gehry's first building in Canada, and according to the AGO website, it marks the very place where he made his initial connection between art and architecture.

I was completely stunned by the beauty of it as soon as I entered the building. I mean stunned! The wheelchair ramp near the front door, with it's wooden floor and half walls winds like a ribbon to the ticket desks. There is a hush to the building. It's quiet and still. Enormous circular staircases wind their way to heaven in the central courtyard and archways from other staircases look through to see them from other angles. Maybe it's because the building is just so new to me, but I almost didn't care if I saw any of the artwork. In fact, I would say that the building far surpassed ANY of the artwork. Is that a good or bad thing?

The Galleria It alia was the highlight for me. The window wall that looks out onto Dundas Street, has ribs that make you feel as though you are inside the body of a whale. I once had a cellist play in my house and because of all the wood I have in my home--wooden floors and beams--the sound was magical. The cellist told me that the wood of the cello resonated with the wood in my home. I couldn't help but wonder what a cello would sound like in the Galleria Italia.

The energy in the Art Gallery is totally different than before the renovation. It's so calming, inviting and actually healing. It feels like a living being. I just wanted to bathe in the light and energy of the space. Can't wait to go again. Maybe I'll look at the art next time.

The Poetics of Robins

2009-09-07T14:28:00.000-07:00

Last spring, I had a battle with a robin. She was trying to build her nest on the transom above my front door. Each day she brought endless amounts of debris from my garden and each day, I used my broom to sweep it away. She, or maybe it was another robin, had built their nest in the exact place two years ago and for a few weeks I couldn’t use the front door. But the worst of it was that in that precarious place, one of the babies had fallen to its death. I didn’t want to have that happen again. So I kept sweeping away the grasses and each day she brought more. We were both determined. Then one weekend I was away for three days. And when I came home, boom! There was a solid, mud-packed nest. I climbed a ladder inside my house and peered into the nest through the transom window. Five small blue eggs nestled in the bottom.

I am reading the book, “Creativity: Where the Divine and Human Meet”, by Matthew Fox, an Episcopal priest and theologian, who is an exponent of Creation Spirituality—the belief that we are born in ‘original blessing’. In his book on creativity, Fox speaks of how it is a lack of trust that keeps us wallowing in our noncreative state. He refers to the book “The Poetics of Space”, by Gaston Bachelard, who says that ‘trust can begin with the simple act of examining a bird’s nest, for when we examine a nest, we place ourselves at the origin of confidence in the world….Would a bird build it’s nest if it did not have its instinct for confidence in the world? A nest is a sign of optimism. It knows nothing of the hostility of the world…A dreamer might say that the world is the nest of mankind. For the world is a nest and an immense power holds the inhabitants of the world in this nest. And with this trust, creativity and imagination come to life.”

I was fearful for the robin’s creative work. And now, as I look at my artwork, I wonder in what way I might be limiting myself or not trusting. The robin approached her creativity with full trust and optimism and dogged determination. Within a short time, four of the eggs hatched, grew wings and flew away.

Wu-Wei

2009-08-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

This is a painting I completed this week. It's from a series called the River of Longing. It doesn’t seem to fit into the series, but I don’t know what else to call it yet. So I’ll just let it be # 0956-P for now. It started off to be something else. I had a fairly clear idea of what I wanted to paint when I began. I struggled and struggled with the image trying to make it be what I saw in my mind. After many hours, I sat back to regard the work and came to the quick and upsetting conclusion that the painting was stunningly boring. In frustration after spending so much time on it, I placed it on my worktable and had the satisfaction of smearing various colours over the surface…the greens and browns I was working with at the time. Then I walked away and took a long break.

When I came back, feeling calmer, I very quickly and roughly sketched in the outline of three vessels, and put it up on my easel to have a look. I was excited by the dark moodiness and the freedom of it. I continued to work on it, but very slowly and with very little effort. It had painted itself!

Only then did I remember reading about Wu Wei. Wu Wei has been translated as “inaction”, “not forcing”, and “doing nothing”.

In the book, Zen in the Art of Archery, Eugen Herrigel has an exchange with his archery master that illustrates how a goal can be reached by giving up the attempt to reach it:

”The right art,” cried the Master, “is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed…What stands in your way is that you have a much too willful will. You think that what you do not do yourself does not happen.”….”What must I do, then?” I asked thoughtfully. “You must learn to wait properly.” “And how does one learn that?” By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind you so decisively that nothing more is left of you but a purposeless tension.”

Sometimes I can find that place when I paint. If I am not attached to the results, and work quickly, without thinking, my paintings are much stronger and help me find new directions to explore. This painting has led me to a new way of expressing the vessel symbol that has recurred throughout my work for the past fifteen years and it has reminded me of an important lesson. Paradoxically, the purposeless characteristic of wu-wei is purposeful; its purpose is not to let purpose get in the way of the goal to be attained.

Unplugged

2009-08-24T11:03:00.000-07:00

River of Longing 8, 24x80", oil on panel©2009 Janice Mason Steeves

I decided to have a retreat in my home last week, to have no communication with the outside world other than to listen to CBC Radio. I booked the week off. No appointments or meetings or dinners with friends. I turned off the computer and unplugged the phone. Freedom!

I spent the time meditating, reading and spending long days in my studio. The days stretched on endlessly like when I was a kid playing outside in summer holidays. I even managed to get some big housecleaning tasks accomplished. I hate housecleaning! Perhaps it kept my feet on the ground to do such nice mundane tasks. I spent a couple of hours one afternoon scrubbing ten years of paint off my big old worktable. A friend tells me that such cleaning makes room for the birth of something new.

The creative ideas started to flow maybe on the third day of the retreat. I have creative ideas at other times too, but with a long flow of time stretching itself out, the ideas had more space to form, without interruption.

Some creative people cut off contact with the outside world for periods of time to do their work. I watched the movie, “Grey Gardens", a powerful documentary about two of Jackie O’s eccentric relatives who became poverty-stricken, living in infested squalor in their East Hampton’s mansion. Drew Barrymore cut off all contact with the outside world for the three months of filming the movie. I read that when the author Susan Sontag wrote The Volcano Lover, she didn’t see her friends, didn’t answer phone calls or open mail for three years to focus her energy on her book. I attended a workshop many years ago with Katherine Liu, a California artist. She said that each month, she paints for three uninterrupted weeks and in the fourth week, she comes out of her studio to visit friends and do household tasks. After spending some time in seclusion this past week, I can understand how that isolation makes for a very creative space where ideas have time to move and grow organically. It’s finding my own balance that’s important. I felt so nourished by this retreat. A bit like going to a spa. I’m resolving to do it twice a year…ummm ….maybe once a month.

Blog and Fear

2009-08-23T07:04:00.000-07:00

(Detail)River of Longing 5 (0952-P)©2009 Janice Mason Steeves
I started blogging about three months ago with the idea that, like taking Vitamin D, it is extremely good for me as an artist to do this. I struggle with the worry of what to say and who will read this blog anyway. Jane Lind is a good friend of mine and an author. Her book, “Perfect Red”, a biography of the artist Paraskeva Clark will be published in November. Her publisher, Cormorant Books, suggested that creating a blog was important for a writer. I decided that what was good for Jane would probably be good for me too.

I write my blog posts sitting here in my quiet room in my house in rural Ontario and then post to the netherworld, imagining that only my friend Jane will be reading these posts or maybe my kids. However I was at an art gallery exhibition two weeks ago and was introduced to one of the exhibiting artists, who said, “I recognize your name, I read your blogs!” I didn’t know whether to be delighted or horrified. It felt a bit like having your personal journal read…..but then of course I know that I’ve published it online…what did I expect?

It’s all very new to me.

I decided that if other people are actually going to read my blog, I’d better get some help with it and enrolled in an online course called Blog Triage with Alyson Stanfield and Cynthia Morris. I’m starting today….

Lesson One:

I’m intending this blog to be about my art process, inspirations, thoughts and worries, travels, and other artists.

In writing this blog I hope to learn to more comfortably write about my work and to become increasingly aware of what drives my own creativity.

I’m hoping that the people who read my blog might be people who are interested in the creative process, other artists, musicians, writers and others who work creatively and who want to connect and share their own processes.

Art and Fear

2009-07-30T17:33:00.000-07:00

I looked at an old sketch book from 2007 yesterday. From time to time I review my old sketch books to find inspiration and to see what I was thinking one year, three years, five years ago. I'm often surprised to find that similar ideas circulate throughout my work. Sometimes I complete a painting only to discover later on when perusing my sketchbooks that I had made an earlier sketch of the same image.

Yesterday what inspired me were some quotes from the book, "Art and Fear" by David Bayles and Ted Orland.

I wrote these notes in my sketchbook that continue to resonate with me.

"As an artist you're expected to make each successive piece uniquely new and different yet reassuringly familiar when set alongside your earlier work. You're expected to make art that's intimately (perhaps even painfully) personal-yet alluring and easily grasped by an audience that has never known you personally."

"..for most art there is no client, and in making it you lay bare a truth you perhaps never anticipated: that by your very contact with what you love, you have exposed yourself to the world. How could you NOT take criticism of that work personally?"

And this: ..."in our artwork there is nothing but reaction. The breathtakingly wonderful thing about this reaction is its truthfulness. Look at your work and it tells you how it is when you hold back and when you embrace. When you are lazy, your art is lazy; when you hold back, it holds back; when you hesitate, it stands there staring, hands in it's pockets. But when you commit, it comes on like blazes."

River of Longing

2009-07-26T13:10:00.000-07:00

This is a recently completed painting in my new series called, "River of Longing".
I continue to work on images of waterlilies and 'vessels', which are boats/canoes or bowls, as in the Evening on the Lake of Dreams Series. But recently the energy seemed to subtly shift into a new series as I begin to work with images to create a new myth which will accompany this work.

Drawing on my interest in and study of Shamanism over the years, the empty canoe image serves as a powerful symbol. In an article in the San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal, "the symbolism of the boat/ship emanates from what Jung calls, 'the primordial era when the unconscious was predominant and the conscious weak', when myth and lore were taken for factual reality and gods and goddesses for granted as projections of the immutable, incomprehensible forces of nature. Long connected in various world religions with magic, death and rebirth, the boat as archetype has a powerful significance".