Janice Mason Steeves

©Janice Mason Steeves 2011 A couple of weeks ago, Helen Hagemann , an Australian poet who was in residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at the same time I was, emailed to tell me that she had written a poem  inspired by one of my paintings she saw there.  A section of that painting took her eye.  I am honoured by this. I was also delighted at how my work was interpreted so differently than my intention as I created it.  I include her blog post here with her poem:   Her Blue Dress and encourage you to check out her website to read more of her poems and see the books she has written. Helen's writing this poem,  makes me consider sources of inspiration:  what inspires us, keeps us creating?  Maybe it's different for everyone. I have just finished reading " The Aran Islands ", written in 1907 by J.M. Synge , the famous Irish playwright.  He spent time on each of the three Aran Islands, mainly, Inish Mann where I visited in ear...

I'm aiming to hold onto the feeling of Ireland for a while yet.  Not so easy though since my re-entry into life hasn't exactly started. I've just recently returned from Edmonton, where my show, Memories of Home , opened on Saturday, Oct. 15th at the Agnes Bugera Gallery . Being in Edmonton, where I lived until I was 17, many memories of growing up under the big open sky of the Prairies came back to me. In this suspended state between returning home from Ireland and opening my show in Edmonton, my thoughts keep returning to the stone walls on the island of Inish Mann.  Perhaps it is because I was born in the Prairies that I felt so claustrophobic there, hemmed in by legions of stone walls.  There I was, on the middle island of the Aran Islands, that is whipped by constant winds which blow up tumultuous, ever-changing clouds, and surrounded by a grey sea that is often covered by white frothy-capped waves.  A wild, open environment.  But there was not...