Janice Mason Steeves

Iceworks 55  oil/cold wax on panel 12x23" © 2018 Janice Mason Steeves I taught a cold wax painting workshop in abstraction this past week at St. Lawrence College in Brockville, Ontario. I've never had so many beginners in one class before. Two had never ever painted. One hadn't painted in 4 years. Three made art using other media. Only two painted regularly in landscape and abstraction. What a challenge! In our morning discussions, I gradually came to understand that the main challenge each artist had to face, was their vulnerability. Of course this is the case in every class. I suppose I was more clearly made aware of it though in this workshop.  As an artist, you come up against yourself all the time. There's no way to hide who we really are.  " I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one." John Steinbeck I've written many time...

Lightworks 1 30x30" Oil on panel ©2015 Janice Mason Steeves I've written before about courage. Many times actually : at times when I have changed directions in my work, when I have felt vulnerable , and when I moved into abstraction in my painting.   Before the two advanced painting workshops I taught this past month, I invited the students t o send me some suggestions for topics they wished me to address in the workshop. Many wrote to say that they wished for some discussion of authenticity and truth. They wondered how to achieve that.   Authenticity takes courage. It takes cour age to show your art, to open yourself to criticism and rejection, to pick yourself up when things aren't going well. Painting t eaches that. Not everyone will like your work. Some will hate it. Others will totally understand it. But opening that way, showing that vulnerability is how you find the truth of who you are. It's saying, "This is who I am."  Brene B...

New Work 1334    30x30"   oil/cold wax on panel  © 2013 Janice Mason Steeves New Work 1335   16x16"  oil/cold wax on panel © 2013 Janice Mason Steeves Red 1   16x16"  oil/cold wax on panel ©2013 Janice Mason Steeves I am reading the wonderful book, Daring Greatly by Bren é  Brown.  She writes of vulnerability. She describes it as the experience of uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure that we face every day. Vulnerability isn't weakness, she says, but "it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage."  I think of the work I am currently doing and how different it is from the work of the past year.  This past year, I worked on a series I called Silence. There is an urgent importance I feel, in finding quiet space in our lives and in our work.  It's vital as well to create quiet spaces in our paintings, where we allow breath to enter.  This felt like a series I could work on for years. ...