Janice Mason Steeves

                        I miss travelling! I’ve always loved to travel especially to wild and remote places  but living on an artist’s unsteady salary, I’ve learned to find inexpensive ways to travel. Several years ago, I discovered  artist residencies, which provide accommodation and small studio spaces. These are available to artists all over the world, some of which are free depending on acceptance of your application, others cost a small amount. I prefer ones that are remote but provide accommodation to a small group of artists rather than just one person. The interaction with artists from other countries is a stimulating, enlightening and enriching experience.                  St. John's Newfoundland 2019 After I’d been teaching painting classes for several years in various parts of Canada, the US, as well as in Sweden and Iceland, I had the idea to combine m...

Pathway 2   12x15" Oil on paper on panel©2019 Janice Mason Steeves 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." Pathway 4  12x24" Oil on paper on panel © 2019 Janice Mason Steeves 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 resid...

I love to travel to wilderness locations such as the ones I described in my previous  blog post , where one can be overwhelmed by the size of the landscape and feel for a time, completely alone, lost in the vastness. It's partly to do with the silence in such landscapes, where you can almost hear your heartbeat. Northern Sweden Northern Sweden I consider the idea of visiting remote places an aid to helping artists develop a more mindful response to the land, and as well, to find a visual vocabulary to express that connection. Mindfulness is the key. Not only being mindful of your own body, feelings and thoughts, but becoming mindfully aware of nature. And then, finding ways to creatively express that connection. I find it so easy when I go for a walk to forget about where I am and think about my problems, or worries or get lost in daydreams. Iona, Scotland Iona, Scotland Iceland Iceland There are many ways of developing a sense of place. One way t...

SCOTLAND Dunskey Castle, Scotland One thing I love to do is to organize workshops in gorgeous retreat centres or lodges or castles in remote areas of the world.  The intention in each of the workshops listed below, is to invite students, through various exercises and outdoor meditations, to connect with the landscape, to carry home that connection and translate it into abstract paintings. Contemplation, writing and painting are ways of connecting with and honouring the land. My friend  Rebecca  Crowell and I are finalizing plans to co-teach a workshop in a magnificent castle in Scotland, south of Glasgow in September 2019. Located near the sea, it has stunning views from the art studio on the top floor and 2000 acres of beautiful grounds to wander, including 2 lochs. We will stay in the West Wing. Registration for this workshop will open in September 2018.   www.dunskey.com NEWFOUNDLAND I'm in the process of planning a cold wax ...

Iceworks 44  12x15"  Oil/cold wax on panel  ©2018 Janice Mason Steeves Iceworks 45  Oil/cold wax on panel ©2018 Janice Mason Steeves Last fall I started a series of blog posts based on John Kabat-Zinn's 7 attitudinal foundations of mindfulness from his book: "Mindfulness for Beginners".  I thought it would be interesting to look at the relationship of  these 7 fundamentals to painting. Trust is one of them.  In a personal story, as some of you know, I had two consecutive knee replacements in 2017.  Much of 2016 and most of 2017 was spent in pain and then later, healing. By the fall of 2017, I was back in action. However, during the healing process, I had a bit of a crisis of faith. Faith in myself to continue to create. Normally I have pretty continuous creative ideas. They arrive like pictures in my mind. Unlike Agnes Martin who had  a separate vision for each painting,  I seem to get pictures in my mind of a series...

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 ©2...

In an earlier blog post , I wrote about breathing in the spirit of place. Some places however, resonate with us while others do not, for whatever reason. I remember travelling once by sail boat to the Queen Charlotte Islands (now called Haida Gwaii), off the west coast of Canada. We anchored at the abandoned Haida villages along the way and took a dingy into shore to walk the land. I had brought along painting supplies, fully intending to sit and paint along the way. I found that I couldn't. Perhaps it was the energy of the land that had a long and sad history. I never did any work from that trip. I resonate with Iceland––the space and the solitude here on this remote horse farm and artist residency in Northern Iceland. “We enter solitude, in which also we lose loneliness… True solitude is found in the wild places, where one is without human obligation." Wendell Berry  In the painting workshop I taught here two weeks ago, I had a goal of trying...