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...

Fragile (1370)  30x30"  Oil/cold wax on panel © 2013 Janice Mason Steeves   In the film, "With My Back to the World",  the artist Agnes Martin talks about how the ideas for her paintings come to her in a flash of inspiration.  In fact, she painted directly from those visions, carefully working out the mathematical division of space.  When she finished a painting, she would simply wait until the next 'inspiration' came to her and didn't paint until it did. Once she had to wait 7 months, she said. My own ideas seem to come to me in  various ways.  Sometimes, like Agnes, I get a picture in my head of a painting.  I never can paint the exact image because I see it only vaguely. It's rather like an idea for a painting or an idea for a series of paintings.  I find that ideas keep coming the more I work.  So many artists and musicians have said that.  Twyla Tharp said that in her book, "The Creative Habit", as did the...

I have been away from painting for most of the past month.  I taught three cold wax and oil workshops and had two exhibitions, one in Edmonton at Bugera Matheson Gallery and another in Guelph that runs until the end of the month at Renann Isaacs Contemporary Art .  I guess that's why I haven't had much time in my studio. Sometimes I need to ease my way back into my studio work by playing.  I wrote about Maintaining the Spirit of Play in a post almost exactly two years ago.  I guess the same issues  continue to circle around and around. A major component of play is  surrender.   I call it the Art of Surrender because it's difficult to explain and often difficult to accomplish.  You know when you've achieved it because you can feel it.  It's a huge relief.  Surrender literally means to stop fighting.  To stop fighting with yourself and the natural flow of life.  It's not about inaction, ...

On Friday I got back into my studio to paint for the first time since February 10th when I fell and broke my painting wrist.  Just getting into the studio was an intimidating task.  I know all of the old tricks that I tend to do when I am trying to get to work but feel I have nothing to say...or when I have been away from work for so long that I have lost confidence that I will ever paint again. I tend to organize the studio first. I put away all of the materials I took out west with me for my workshops, rearranged some old work that is in the shelving system, looked at the work I finished up until the time I broke my wrist.  I did that during the week.  But by Friday I had no more excuses.  So I finally talked myself into going in there about 10am, telling myself I'd just work over old pieces. There is an excellent movie about Agnes Martin called With My Back to the World .  In this wonderfully meditative film,  Martin, like a wis...