Janice Mason Steeves

Iceworks 48  12x15" Oil/cold wax on panel ©2018 Janice Mason Steeves Just a week ago, I was interviewed by Rebecca Crowell for her podcast: The Messy Studio. It was a very casual interview, especially because her "recording studio" in New Mexico where I was visiting her, was a blanket fort on the floor beside her bed! As I listened to the podcast last week when it was posted, I was reminded again how important the idea of play is in my own art practice. Click here to listen to the interview. Rebecca has observed that my work has a conceptual component and asked which comes first, the idea or the painting. I responded that it's always play that comes first, staying open to what wants to come through. No direction. No purpose. No worrying about whether anyone would like the work or not. Simply playing with materials. I realize I've written about play several times over the years. It still fascinates me: that state of not-knowingness. Of being open to ...

Green 5'x 6' oil/cold wax on canvas  ©2013 Janice Mason Steeves I'm preparing for an exhibition in November, at the  Burlington Art Centre  in Burlington, ON, a beautiful public gallery located on the western end of Lake Ontario. As is so often the case with art, if you can allow the process to unfold and trust that it will, amazing things can happen.  I believe that art is it's own spiritual journey. The paintings in this series have led me on such a journey. Last spring, Denis Longchamps, the Director of Programs, asked to come to my studio to see how the work was progressing. I had an idea for the show and had begun work on it. I had been working on a series of paintings I called Lines of Desire.  This series was an inner journey, where I was exploring my feelings related to the sudden life-threatening illness of a close friend. Denis liked the direction I was going and suggested we meet sometime in September to select work for the sh...

Poem Series: 10110  12x12" oil/cold wax on panel © Janice Mason Steeves 2010 My exhibition, Poems from the Moon Garden opened on Friday night at Abbozzo Gallery in Oakville, Ontario.   The show continues until November 7th.  Here are a few of the installation shots before and during the show. Abbozzo Gallery Owner- Ineke Zigrossi With artist friend, Shirley Williams on the right My painting of the past several years has been strongly influenced by the archetypal concept of pilgrimage.  This current work has increasingly become more experimental and exploratory, turning inward and moving toward abstraction.  As I began this body of work, I decided to drop all my known reference points—to step off the edge of what is familiar to me.  In Buddhism, this attitude of setting aside, for the time being, preconceived ideas, beliefs and expectations is known as 'beginner's mind". Beginner's mind is like a child’s mind, just present to explore and obse...