Janice Mason Steeves

There is a way we have of viewing the world that is unique to each of us. We see through our own lenses. Several people have commented lately on how similar my photos are to my paintings. Which influences the other?  I think of some photos I took at the Baer Art Center artist residency in Iceland this past July. I was sitting on a grassy hill right on the edge of the fiord. My camera somehow ended up in the grass beside me and I happened to take a photo while it rested there. When I saw what I'd taken, I took about 80 more shots! The colours in the grasses were violet, pink, lavender, yellow and green. It was dizzying. I felt like I had opened a door into a wonderland, where the blades of grass were huge and indistinct. But most interestingly, they were transparent, overlapping each other. Recently, I taught a Cold Wax and Oil painting workshop in Anchorage, Alaska. At the end of the workshop, a friend and I took a Glacier Cruise on Prince William ...

Yesterday I had the flight of a lifetime. Stan Steck is a pilot who lives in Anchorage, Alaska, where I'm teaching a 5-day painting workshop. Retired after flying many years for the National Park Service and now a pilot with K2 Aviation, he has his own single engine airplane, called a Maule. Stan offered to take me for a flight to see Denali (formerly called Mt. McKinley). The day was cloudless with brilliant sunshine and no wind. A perfect day for flying. We drove over the marshland, lakes and tundra which cover the 250 miles of flatland between Anchorage and Denali. Rising to 20, 322 feet, Denali is the tallest mountain in North America. Stan ferries hundreds of rock climbers each year up to a base camp on Denali as well as offering flights to sightseers like me. I was fairly nervous setting out, with the idea that we might circle this enormous mountain and land on a glacier! The trip was beyond my wildest imaginings. We flew up glaciers and through what seemed ...