Janice Mason Steeves

Iceland Works 1 10x10" oil stick/sand/acrylic on paper ©2016 Janice Mason Steeves Iceland Works 2 10x10"  oil stick/sand/acrylic on paper © 2016 Janice Mason Steeves I have written before about Robert Macfarlane, the author of The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot. In walking some of the ancient pathways in England and Scotland, he came to consider the idea  " that cognition is site-specific, or motion-sensitive; that we think differently in different landscapes." And therefore more radically, that "certain thoughts might be possible only in certain places...." W hen I travel to artist residencies in different countries, I think of that quotation. And in my workshops that are located in beautiful, natural surroundings, I give that quotation to the students to consider as they sit outdoors for a short meditation each day. At the Baer Art Centre residency I attended recently in Iceland, I did a series of small paintings influenced by the land...

 Rebecca Crowell and I have just finished our month-long residency in Southern Lapland. We leave tomorrow. As a sort of wrap-up, we wrote a co-blog post about our experiences here.  I'll include a few other photos here, but click on the link below if you'd like to read our stories. http://www.crowellandmasonsteeves.blogspot.ca/2015/06/notes-from-lappland.html At Stekenjokk.  The light was gorgeous. At Stekenjokk, the highest place on the Wilderness Road that leads into Norway. The road is only open in early June because of all the snow. Look at how high the snow still is in this section of the road.

In this artist residency at Ricklundgarden in Southern Lapland, I've been writing a lot and painting and the days pass in a dreamy state of creativity. It's a disorienting place for the quiet and the beauty and the endless daylight. The sun rises shortly after 3am but it's never really dark so my body is unsure what time it is. It can't form a rhythm. And in that disorientation, I feel I'm moving as though in slow motion through another world where there is no time. I paint, I write and I sit dreamily watching the clouds slowly glide across the rounded snow-covered mountains beyond the lake outside my window. This is such a silent place. Even though I live in the countryside in Ontario, this is a more silent silence. I am moving into it. Yesterday morning the sky was grey with heavy low rain clouds. I was painting in my studio when all of a sudden, a loud booming, rumbling sound came from the sky. I ran outside to see what it was. I couldn't see any...

Kultsjon Lake, Lapland, Sweden  Here at Ricklundgarden in the little village of Saxnas Sweden in Southern Lapland, Rebecca Crowell and I have just finished teaching a 7-day painting workshop. It was an incredibly memorable week for us all, from a campfire in the Sami kåta to a hike in the snowy, dreamy, treeless landscape of Stekenjokk near the border with Norway, to working in the studio here at Ricklundgarden.     Ricklundgarden studio Kåta Stekenjokk, Sweden We saw late late sunsets that lasted long into the night, and early morning sunrises only a few hours later in this land so close to the Arctic Circle. As a way of connecting to this powerful landscape, and as a time for contemplation and reflection, I asked the artists in the workshop to each find a quiet place to sit outdoors--a sit spot--where they would spend 15 minutes each day.  They were to return to the same spot each day at different times of day.  As part of that p...