Week 1 at Baer Art Center Residency

I'm settling into my residency at the Baer Art Center in Iceland. It's been nearly a week now and my eyes and mind are filled with many sights that are so different from the part of the world where I live (in the country outside of Toronto, Canada).

The residency is located on a farm near the town of Hofsos in Northern Iceland on the shores of a fiord called Skagafjordur. The owners breed Icelandic horses. One of the most exciting things our group of five residents has done, was to hike up into a nearby valley, after being dropped off part way up. We passed through a couple of cattle gates and across a small river to where the horses are allowed to run free for the summer. They were curious, and cautiously came toward us and surrounded us, allowing us to pat them.

Yesterday, we drove around the north part of the peninsula, through three tunnels, that connect formerly isolated towns. One of the tunnels was a one-way road, built in 1967, narrow and scary. The other two are newer, just completed in 2010. One of the tunnels is 4km long and the second is 7km. The traffic there was also one way, with travellers going south having the right of way. Travellers going north have to pull into one of the passing places inside the tunnels.

We continued south to Akureyri, at the bottom of that fiord, where there is a small but wonderful Icelandic Folk and Outsider Art Museum.

Akureyri is a beautiful and hilly city, the second largest city in Iceland. It was a hot day for Iceland, and we strolled around the city center in shirtsleeves. After a dinner of Arctic Char we drove an hour and a half back to Baer, inland, along the #1 Highway through the Oxnadalur valley.

Akureyri

My work is slowly changing as I explore black and white acrylics, ink, pigment sticks and various other supplies I brought along with me.

I'm looking forward to what the next few weeks will bring.

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...

Lessons that Stone Walls Teach

Dry stone wall in the Burren, Co. Clare, Ireland I've just returned from teaching a Workshop in Wild Places class in the Burren in County Clare, Ireland. Writing this post, I'm reminded of another post I wrote after visiting Inishmaan, the middle of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland several years ago. Stone walls crisscrossed the island in tight webs like a fisherman's net. I wrote then that the web of stone walls made me think of the idea of putting limitations on our painting as a way of exploring more deeply and how walls give limits against the limitless. You can read that article here. As our group hiked in the Burren with our guide, Marie McGauran we learned that the walls are stronger because of the holes in them. The wind can pass through. The oldest stone walls, estimated to be 3500 years old are at Skara Brae, a Neolithic site in Orkney. Most walls were built in the 18th and 19th century, marking areas of private ownership and resultin...

Am I Too Old to Change? Embracing Life

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels I'm in the process, at last, of working on the book that came to me in a dream seven years ago. It has circled my head all these years, demanding I get at it. It's called: We're Not Done Yet: Coming to Art Later in Life . It has actually hung in the air a couple of feet behind my head, attached by a string like a helium balloon, like a cartoon cloud, waiting for me to get to it. Some of you will know of it because I posted a request on Facebook in 2019 asking for artists who have come to art later in life to reply to me if they'd like to answer a questionnaire. I received 168 responses plus earlier interviews I did before the put out the questionnaire. There was some overlap, and some didn't respond after they'd offered to. All in all, I received 128 responses. By a huge majority it was women who responded to my questionnaire. By the time we get into our 60's we bring a rich life experience to our work: m...

Janice Mason Steeves

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