Janice Mason Steeves

Rebecca Crowell and I have just launched a co-blog we call Conversations on Art.  We will post discussions on art from time to time as well as continue to write our own blog posts.  Our first post on this new site is called Two Friends/Two Irish Residencies-Part 1.  We thought that we would discuss our shared experiences at each residency as a way of introduction.  I invite you to read our first post:   www.crowellandmasonsteeves.blogspot.com If you wish to receive those posts by email, please sign up on that website by putting your email address into the box on the right column of the post. Please feel free to send us suggestions for topics for our 'conversations'. Hope you enjoy the read. Janice

Fragile 18    29x29"  oil/cold wax on panel   ©2014 Janice Mason Steeves Sitting in my somewhat beaten-up but oh-so-comfortable studio chair the other day, considering a painting I was working on, I began to think of earlier work I had done that had some similarity to this new work.  I pulled out an old slide album from 1992.  I documented my paintings with slides in those days.  In 1992 I made my first foray into abstraction, spurred on by a trip to Baffin Island in Canada's arctic. I had the good fortune that year to travel with the well-known Canadian landscape painter, Doris McCarthy.  We travelled to Pond Inlet in the month of January when the sun had not yet returned to the arctic.  The thermometer in the window of our church/home remained at a steady -40C (which is the same as -40F)....maybe it was frozen at that temperature.  The wind chill took it to a place that was beyond reckoning.  Doris was 82 years old then and as fit, strong and hard-working as a woman