As My Work Goes Into the World

The work at Gallery Stratford awaiting installation

I'm enjoying a small pause in my work cycle. My studio is bare and quiet.

My solo exhibition called Gathering Light, will open at the beautiful and spacious Gallery Stratford in Stratford, Ontario on January 25th. It runs until April 7th. Over the Christmas holidays I was busy with the details of preparing the work to be sent off: sanding edges, attaching hanging hooks, documenting, cataloguing and wrapping the work. Twenty-seven paintings were sent off on Monday.

I've worked for months on this exhibition, flowing on a stream of high energy that carried me along and at times exhausted me. It's exciting this business of art. We put ourselves in the path of the Gods so they will carry us along. And if we do this consistently we find a deep inner meditative place. It involves trust and surrender and in the process, we learn more about ourselves. That's the goal of painting or any art form isn't it? To learn more about ourselves and what we're here for.

Natalie Goldberg in her book Writing Down the Bones, talks about art as a spiritual practice:

"One of the main aims in writing practice is to learn to trust your own mind and body: to grow patient and nonaggressive. Art lives in the Big World. One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process in writing and life that matters. The process teaches about sanity. We are trying to become sane along with our poems and stories. Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist master said, 'We must continue to open in the face of tremendous opposition. No one is encouraging us to open and still we must peel away the layers of the heart.'"

Soon this work will be launched into the world. Like a living being, it will find its own way. And I will let it go. In time, I'll move on to new work, another cycle will begin and I'll explore new avenues.

But for another few weeks, I'm going to just enjoy the end of this cycle and seeing this new work off on it's journey.

Meet the Owners of a Scottish Castle

Anne Tristine Nguyen, Ali Orr Ewing, their children, Ava, Atticus and their dog, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Dunskey Estate, Portpatrick, Scotland Anne Tristine Nguyen and her husband, Alistair Orr Ewing are the owners of Dunskey Estate near Portpatrick, Scotland where I will teach a painting workshop in September. Dunskey is a splendid Edwardian castle on 2000 acres of ocean-front land with miles of walking trails. As well as daily workshop sessions in the studio on the top floor of the castle, our small group of artists will enjoy breathtaking hikes, superb accommodation and fabulous meals. Not having met owners of a castle before, I asked Anne if I could interview her to hear a little of their background story and that of the castle. Can you tell me a little of your personal story and that of your husband, Alistair Orr Ewing? Anne emigrated to America when she was ten years old, but it was at an art gallery in Saigon, her birthplace, where s...

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 ...

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...

Janice Mason Steeves

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