Janice Mason Steeves

Of the Camino  3  20x21"  Oil/earthen pigments on panel In the workshop I recently taught in Spain, I gave a slide show where I presented a survey of my work from the past 12 years of my 35 year art career. I hadn't seen the slide show for a while. The last time I'd presented it was for a talk at a public gallery a few years ago in conjunction with my show.  It's a good exercise to look at the development over time of your work now and again. I realized again how important place is in my work. Place and light. Both. And travel. Of the Camino 1  8x40" Oil/earthen pigment on panel  While I love coming home, I equally love to travel as you might know from my recent introduction of Workshops in Wild Places . I expect my work will continue to grow and change as I travel to the various places where I've organized workshops. Connecting to place is something that's done with the heart. Not all places resonate with my heart. I'm happy to see t...

You feel the energy of the Camino right away at the retreat centre in the small village of Castrillo de los Polvazares. I've just returned from teaching  a workshop in Northern  Spain with Rebecca Crowell. Even though the Camino is about walking a sacred journey, about contact with the earth, I felt an ungroundedness, a sort of lightheadedness, an open vulnerability.  Basia Goodwin, one of the owners of the retreat centre, Flores del Camino, talked about the idea of the Camino being divided into three stages of personal growth, corresponding to the three distinct geographical regions. The first is the physical part, which is all about the difficulty of walking, the energy required, the blisters, the aching muscles. The second third is the mental/emotional part where the pilgrim is walking through the vast, treeless plains of the Meseta. There is much time for thinking about self, about life, about the reason for the journey. In this expansive place, d...

In healing from my second knee replacement lately, I haven't been able to stop thinking about my last workshop here in my studio at the end of April. It was the most intense group of women I have yet had the privilege to teach. Our lunchtime conversations immediately delved into a depth that I hadn't experienced before. There is a passion in people who come to art later in life, a richness, a depth that is earned through living long enough. They share a strength of purpose, a deep need to connect with their creative souls. My workshops are filled with older adults, by far the majority are women, who are generally in the age range from 50-75. These are baby boomers, who are redefining old age and creating a new term which some call Second Adulthood. Their children are grown and gone, their parents have passed on, and they are retired or are near retirement. All of a sudden, they have freedom they have never had before. This is especially true for women who, in this gen...