Janice Mason Steeves

Potential art supplies to pack I'm wondering what to pack for my artist residency at the Baer Art Center in Iceland that's coming up in a week. It's the art supplies that are the problem really. What do I pack? What will I work on? How can I know? Do I limit myself in advance? It won't be easy to get more art supplies once I'm there.  It's not only the opportunity to travel that I'm looking forward to, but to be allowed an entire month to spend on my painting and my writing is a huge gift.  I like the freedom an artist residency allows me, to explore new ideas, new ways of working. "We travel, initially to lose ourselves and we travel next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate", says Pico Iyer in his essay, "Why We Travel". "Yet for me", he goes on to say, "the first great joy of travelling is simply the luxury of ...

Gathering Light on Paper:16    16x16" Oil on paper ©2015 Janice Mason Steeves         To read Part 1, click here To read Part 2, click here Elements of Design Part 3,  is about looking at your work and the work of other artists to help you discover what you like. In my workshops, I love to teach techniques of working with the medium of cold wax and oil along with the elements of design. The process of painting involves the head and the heart- free and expressive play, along with an understanding of structure. Not one without the other. I'm interested how to read abstract paintings, and understand what elements of design an artist uses to express their ideas. For each design element, I teach various ways of working with cold wax and oil. For example, when I teach the design element, Line, I teach several different techniques for making interesting lines. And then I invite each student to consider the importance of Line in the...

Fragile 22 50x50"  Oil/cold wax on panel  © 2014 Janice Mason Steeves In his book, Free Play, Stephen Nachmanovitch, an improvising musician,  wrote, "I am not in the music business, I am not in the creativity business; I am in the surrender business. Improvisation is acceptance, in a single breath, of both transience and eternity. Surrender means cultivating a comfortable attitude toward not-knowing, being nurtured by the mystery of moments that are dependably surprising, ever fresh". Last weekend, I taught a cold wax and oil painting workshop in my studio with eight artists, some of whom were very advanced.  I always teach the elements of design in my workshops-a good refresher for those who have studied them and an intro for those who have not.  One artist who is an accomplished figurative painter, had great difficulty dividing the painting surface into shapes.  I tried in various ways to help her understand what I was after, drawing some pi...