Connecting with the Spirit of Place

My latest exhibition, entitled Spirit of Place is currently running at Bugera Matheson Gallery in Edmonton, Alberta. I chose the title based on my experiences at residencies in both Iceland and Spain. My intention when I travel is to try to connect to the Genius Loci or the Spirit of Place. Wikipedia defines genius loci in this way: "In classical Roman religion, a genius loci was the protective spirit of a place. It was often depicted in religious iconography as a figure holding attributes such as a cornucopia, patera or snake. Many Roman altars found throughout the Western Roman Empire were dedicated to a particular genius loci."

I'm interested in discovering how I feel in a place. Mostly I'm interested in how I feel in the landscape and I search for remote places where I can travel or attend an artist residency. I feel most energized and at peace in wild and beautiful places, silent places, where I feel I can breathe. I was brought up in the Canadian prairies and I believe the landscape of our birth stays in our bones.

One residency that inspired this work, was in northern Iceland where a vast and treeless landscape provided a view down to the bottom of the fiord, and the other was in Flores del Camino, a retreat centre in a tiny medieval stone village on the Camino de Santiago, an ancient spiritual pilgrimage route in northern Spain. Although these two residencies seem unconnected, when you open the back door of the retreat centre, you see a wide-open view of the the plains leading up to the Montes de León. One of the connections between the two places, was through the idea of space.

Castrillo de los Polvazares, Spain

Baer Art Center, Iceland

In the Spain works, developed after I came home, I began playing with more colour than I'd experienced in Iceland but with the same sense of space. The idea of a pathway came to me, a pathway like the Camino, that led me from one journey to the next, linking the two journeys, the two bodies of work visually, spiritually and emotionally.

Pathway 9 16x24.5" Oil on paper on panel © Janice Mason Steeves

"In this stillness, I am the trees alive with singing. I am the sky everywhere at once. I am the snow and the wind bearing stories across geographies and generations. I am the light everywhere descending. I am my heart evoking drum song. I am my spirit rising. In the smell of these sacred medicines burning, I am my prayers and my meditation, and I am time captured fully in this now. I am a traveller on a sacred journey through this one shining day."

Richard Wagamese from the book, Embers

I'll be leading a workshop to this same village in Spain in 2020.

For this and other adventures, go to Workshops in Wild Places

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 she met Al

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 and the phon

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 resulting in poverty

Janice Mason Steeves

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