Janice Mason Steeves

Gathering Light 28A   60x60"   Oil on canvas  ©2014 Janice Mason Steeves In my work this past year, I have been focusing on light, preparing for my exhibition in January at Gallery Stratford, in Stratford, Ontario.  I write this on the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year.   Ancient people knew about light.   They spent hundreds of years building stone circles and passage graves, orienting them to the sunlight or moonlight at solstices and equinoxes. Light was sacred to them.   Inner light and the oneness of the world were ideas sacred to the monks on Iona.  Besides spending time this past fall visiting a passage grave in Ireland, and walking the ancient stone circle of Callanish on the Isle of Lewis, I attended a retreat on the island of Iona in Scotland. It was here that Celtic Christianity was brought into Europe.  I decided to metaphorically gather some of that light--from Iona and from the passage graves and st...

Gathering Light 9   60x60"  Oil on canvas ©2014 Janice Mason Steeves One thread that ran through the whole month of my recent trip to Scotland was related to art.  Of course that would be the case.  Being an artist is a way of living, of seeing, of being in the world.  When I told people I met on the trip that I was an artist, they naturally asked about my work.  It was a good exercise in trying to describe my non-objective work. One lovely elderly man named Jock engaged me in a lively conversation.  When I mentioned to him that I am an abstract painter, he told me he liked high realism.  That comment set the stage for an interesting conversation.  He was very curious about why I wanted to paint abstractly.  He asked intelligent questions and gave me the gift of focusing intently on our conversation.  I told him that my work is about light, that I'm interested in painting the essence of light.  I described my ...

                   Pilgrimage on Iona to Columba's Bay As I write this, I am sitting in the attic room of a B&B in Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland.  My high windows overlook the harbour where I'll leave from very early tomorrow morning to cross The Minch on the ferry, to get to mainland Scotland. The sea is calm and pink in the light of the setting sun. The wind changes here by the hour.  Yesterday the wind was so strong I could have spread my arms and flown across The Minch.  Parents had to hang on to their children! I travelled last week to Iona to attend a pilgrimage/retreat led by John Philip Newell, author and poet who is internationally acclaimed for his work in the field of Celtic Christianity, The island of Iona, off the west coast of Scotland, is the symbolic centre of Scottish Christianity.   In 563 AD, Columba, with thirteen followers, landed at the south end of the island, at...

Silence 30 50x50"  oil/cold wax on panel © 2013 Janice Mason Steeves When I return from a journey,  I let the experience wash through me, not knowing what effect it will have on my work. I just begin to work, and after I have a few paintings under my belt,  I stand back to see what's happening.  Then I realize that it could be a colour I saw that influenced me or the lines on the standing stones, or even something someone said to me. I always find that I am slow to really settle into a trip, especially when it requires that I paint.  For me, painting is about place; my relationship with the place I am in.  In his new book: The Old Ways, A Journey on Foot , Robert MacFarlane says that "the two questions we should ask of any strong landscape are these: firstly, what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else?  And then, vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself?" I painted in the beautif...

I'm heading off in two more days, to Ireland for my artist residency at Cill Rialaig. The Cill Rialaig Project, which opened in 1993, was founded by Noelle Campbell Sharp as a place where artists, writers and musicians can spend a period of dedicated time developing their own work. There are seven cottages, each with studio space, that were restored from the ruins of a deserted pre-famine village, circa 1796.  Situated on Bolas Head, a remote peninsula in County Kerry , the cottages sit on top of a cliff face overlooking Ballinskelligs Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.  I'm going to meet up in Killarney with my dear friend Rebecca Crowell , an artist from the U.S.  We'll rent a car to get to this remote residency.  It's a 3 mile hike into the nearest town of Ballinskelligs so it will be convenient to have a car, and especially wonderful to have two of us to share the driving in case one is frightened of driving a stick shift on the left side of t...

24x24" oil on panel © 2012 Janice Mason Steeves I'm in the process of making a lot of decisions.  I am making reservations to go to Cill Rialaig , my artist's residency in Ireland in October.  Afterwards,  I'll travel on to Scotland to visit my relatives who live near Aberdeen.  Then I'll go to the island of Iona for Quiet Week,  a program which will involve meditation, sharing and contemplative prayer.  I have many, many small decisions to make about flights, places to stay, where to leave my big suitcase full of art supplies so I don't have to lug it around Scotland. Those sorts of things.  I am thinking today about the process of decision-making in life and in art. This reminds me of a story my daughter once told me.  She was working at a camp in western Canada. She and her friend had gone into town for groceries.  As she was nearing the checkout, she was hesitating to decide which checkout had the shortest line....back and forth...