Skip to main content

Poems from the Moon Garden Opening


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.



Labels:

Comments

  1. Sharon BarfootOctober 24, 2010 at 7:03 PM

    Looks like a fabulous show. I am on my way to see it on the weekend.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Liminal Time

 The word liminal comes from the Latin, limen meaning threshold. an in-between place, a place of transition, a time of waiting and not knowing. Dawn and dusk are considered liminal places. Crepuscular animals, like foxes and coyotes are most active at this time of day, a time that is considered a magical time in Celtic spirituality and to Indigenous people which is perhaps the origin of their designation as tricksters.   As I write this, the northern hemisphere has just passed the vernal equinox, where day and night are of equal length.We are in a liminal space between winter and spring right now, unsure if we will have one more storm or snowfall before spring finally settles in. We're also in a liminal place as we live through this pandemic with the  anxiety and discomfort of not  knowing. A  time of great transition for the entire world, wondering what we've learned from this and what lessons we'll carry forward.     Author and Fr...
Post a Comment
Read more

Connecting with the Spirit of Place

Pathway 2   12x15" Oil on paper on panel©2019 Janice Mason Steeves My latest exhibition, entitled Spirit of Place is currently running at Bugera Matheson Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta. I chose the title based on my experiences at residencies in both Iceland and Spain. My intention when I travel is to try to connect to the Genius Loci or the Spirit of Place. Wikipedia defines genius loci in this way: " In classical Roman religion, a genius loci was the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted in religious iconography as a figure holding attributes such as a cornucopia, patera or snake. Many Roman altars found throughout the Western Roman Empire were dedicated to a particular genius loci." Pathway 4  12x24" Oil on paper on panel © 2019 Janice Mason Steeves I 'm interested in discovering how I feel in a place. Mostly I'm interested in how I feel in the landscape and I search for remote places where I can travel or attend an artist resid...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Importance of Silence in Art

Gathering Light 60x60"  Oil on canvas © 2014 Janice Mason Steeves  Michael David Rosenberg, the musician known as Passenger, sings, "See all I need is a whisper in a world that only shouts." In the workshops I teach, I find that one of the most common problems with paintings is that they shout. Most have too much going on: too many small shapes, too much texture, extremes of colour, too many lines, too much, too much. One thing I say most often as I walk around the classroom working with students individually, is 'make bigger shapes'.  But not only bigger shapes. Quiet shapes.  Where can your eye go and rest in the painting? That isn't a consideration in much of contemporary painting or much of contemporary life.  Ours is a noisy world both visually and auditorily.  Ours is a world that shouts.  People are afraid of silence. I wrote a blog post  3 years ago about planning a retreat in my own home, where I shut off the computer ...
1 comment
Read more