Janice Mason Steeves

Influence of Hue 40 x 40" oil/cold wax on panel ©2011 Janice Mason Steeves 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! ...

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 commu...

©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 ear...

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...

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...

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 aro...

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...

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 b...

Before I came to the artist residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centr e, 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.  ...

For the month of September I'm doing an artist residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centr e 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 ...