Janice Mason Steeves

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...

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...

Recently I was interviewed by Amy Guion Clay for her blog post on Artist/Travellers. Amy is an inveterate traveller and has gone to 17 artist residencies in the past number of years. When I first found her blog in 2011,  I was heading off to an artist residency in Can Serrat, Spain. Amy had just been there and was on her way to residencies around the world in a year she devoted to travel. Currently she's been to 17 artist residencies and has recently released an online video program  teaching all about artist residencies. She interviewed me because of my long-standing interest in art and travel. You can read the interview here. Cill Rialaig artist residency, Ireland. Out on Bolus Head with the Skellig Islands in the distance One's destination is never a place, but always a new way of seeing things.  Henry Miller

Dry Pigments from Montserrat Yesterday I received an email from Sandy Lambert, an artist who was in one of my painting workshops recently.  She is going to be painting in Ireland in September and was wondering if I could suggest exercises, an approach or technique to help her express a sense of place in her paintings.  Before Sandy's question, I hadn't spent time considering how I approached painting when I am in another environment.  It has just happened spontaneously and unconsciously.  Mine is a very tactile or kinaesthetic approach.  I particularly think of artist residencies in response to her question because the residencies I have attended were each 3 or 4 weeks in duration.  That length of time gave me the opportunity to get some sense of the place as well as time to work on a small body of work.  I don't ever seem to settle quickly into a place.  I find that I need to walk the land and explore for a few days to get over jet lag...

There are some beautiful hikes nearby the residency that eventually lead to Montserrat . I haven´t quite made it to the base of the mountain yet.  The weather here in the more mountainous region of Catalonia has been cool, around 14 degrees and mostly sunny. Great for hiking. Yesterday I went into Barcelona to meet up with my friend Rebecca Crowell and her husband Don Ticknor from the U.S.  We met up at the Fundacion Antoni Tapies  where we saw a small number of Tapies pieces and a terrific film about him and his work..  On the lower level of the museum was a retrospective of the work of Anna Maria Maiolino , an Italian-born artist who lives in Brazil. The Tapies website says that Maiolino´s ¨complex works have developed through a variety of media: poetry, woodcuts, photography, film, performance, sculpture, installation and, above all, drawing. The wide spectrum of subjects, interests and attitudes that underlies her work does not follow a linear devel...

I had some exciting news last week. I've been accepted to do an artist residency in Can Serrat , Spain for next fall. It's about 45km from Barcelona . There are a couple of websites devoted to artist residencies. The one I used is called Res Artis . What mainly drew me to this area of Spain was my interest in seeing the Black Madonna in the monastery at Montserrat , about a three hour uphill hike from Can Serrat. This famous site of holy visions became a place of religious pilgrimage and has been for centuries, possibly going back to pre-Christian times. "The history of Montserrat is fascinating and started in 880 when a small group of shepherd children saw a bright light descending from the sky in the Montserrat mountains. In the same moment the children heard angels singing and the music filled their hearts with a radiant joy. Overwhelmed by the experience the children ran home to frantically recall the experience to their parents. The parents were sceptical bu...