After I finished teaching my cold wax painting workshop at the Baer Art Center in northern Iceland, I stayed on to do a two-week residency. When I left home, I had some idea of what I wanted to paint in those two weeks. I was going to paint the subtle colours of Iceland day by day in a very minimal way.
However, after doing several of the minimal paintings, I had no interest in doing more. As usual, the paintings led the way and it seemed that that was not what I was going to paint.
So I started again where I'd left off last year when I did a month-long residency at Baer. The paintings soon morphed into different forms, taking on the textures and colours around me, particularly the textures on the rocks I found on the stony beach in front of the Art Center.
©2017 Janice Mason Steeves |
©2017 Janice Mason Steeves |
Gradually changing.
©2017 Janice Mason Steeves
©2017 Janice Mason Steeves |
©2017 Janice Mason Steeves |
At home, I've begun to make diptychs and triptychs of the gestural work alongside new minimal paintings, combining them into a different form that speaks (I hope) of both the power and texture of the land as well as it's spacious silence.
©2017 Janice Mason Steeves |
©2017 Janice Mason Steeves |
©2017 Janice Mason Steeves |
We don't know where our work will take us. To be a painter is to surrender to the process.
oh wow, very beautiful. Yes you are very right - it is best not to know where we are going. Because if we did know....what would be the point, really? love you xo
ReplyDeleteThanks Judy. Good to hear from you!
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