Janice Mason Steeves

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

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