Janice Mason Steeves

Pathway 9  Oil on paper on panel  16x24.5 © 2019 Janice Mason Steeves I have a friend who turned 103 last August. She was my supervisor when I worked in the psychology department of a psychiatric hospital in Ontario. I was fresh out of university with a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology and thought I knew it all. In the first week on the job, I wrote and submitted my first report. My friend (we'll call her Martha), phoned me in my office which was just down the hall from hers. There were no computers in those days. She asked me in a very reproachful tone, if I had just submitted a report. Yes, I had, I replied. She told me that I was to consult with her before submitting any report. Would I please come to her office. Martha was sitting behind her desk with a somewhat disdainful look on her face. She did not suffer fools lightly and I most definitely was proving to be a fool. Martha and I began a very uncomfortable relationship. Very slowly and gradually though, ...

Delicate Balance 16x16" Oil on paper ©2015 Janice Mason Steeves I've always considered play to be the driving force that leads my work. It takes me into new territory, helps me break boundaries and express myself in different ways. Mindful play is the sort of play that It involves preparing ourselves in an inner way, calming our minds and bringing ourselves into the present moment. It also involves coming to the work with an understanding of structure. It's not thinking about design, it's more that we have incorporated that knowledge and then we let it go. In the same way, we can't pick up a saxophone and become jazz musicians by blowing random notes. Jazz has structure and skill behind it and the musician moves beyond it in order to fly. My current work as in the photo above, began this past winter after an intense year of work in preparation for a major exhibition. After the work was completed, I needed to have a respite and simply play with paint on pap...

Gathering Light 24 40x40"  Oil on panel ©2014 Janice Mason Steeves Yesterday, I was invited to be a juror for the Etobicoke Arts Group annual juried exhibition along with an artist whose work I admire, Warren Hoyano.   Although I have juried several exhibitions in the past, it has been a little while since the last time. I realize that all the teaching I have been doing has given me the clarity to be a better adjudicator and has given me the words to be better able to articulate my choices. The process also brought up for me, early memories of being on the other side of the jury process, as an artist whose work was sometimes accepted and often rejected from juried exhibitions. Although we knew each other's work, Warren and I had never met.  In the time span of 90 minutes, we were to figure out how to work together and to choose up to 60 artworks from the 108 submitted.  As well, we were to choose from the works selected, 6 award-winners. The task was daun...

The work at Gallery Stratford awaiting installation I'm enjoying a small pause in my work cycle.  My studio is bare and quiet. My solo exhibition called Gathering Light , will open at the beautiful and spacious Gallery Stratford in Stratford, Ontario  on January 25th.  It runs until April 7th.  Over the Christmas holidays I was busy with the details of preparing the work to be sent off: sanding edges, attaching hanging hooks, documenting, cataloguing and wrapping the work.  Twenty-seven paintings were sent off on Monday. Gathering Light 25 (1455)  60x60"  Oil on Canvas ©2014 Janice Mason Steeves I've worked for months on this exhibition, flowing on a stream of high energy that carried me along and at times exhausted me.  It's exciting this business of art.  We put ourselves in the path of the Gods so they will carry us along.  And if we do this consistently we find a deep in...

Gathering Light 13   60x60"  oil on canvas © 2014 Janice Mason Steeves I struggled with a painting I was working on the other day.   It’s a large one, 60x60”.  I kept getting unwanted lines. Nothing was blending or flowing.  I am always aware of how the painting is going, what it’s saying to me as I work on it and I try to follow that.  What I didn’t realize is that I was  trying to control the painting more than I  knew.  As I  struggled, I talked to myself a little.  I told myself that I could always add  another layer on it tomorrow. That’s normally the way I work, layer upon layer, gradually building up the surface day by day, in thin transparent layers. I worked this one over and over,  back and forth, trying to blend it, going in different directions, adding more paint. I tried to stay in a calm meditative place but after several hours of this, I needed a break.  I stepped back, ...

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 ...

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...

Fragile 5     29x29"  Oil/cold wax on panel © 2014 Janice Mason Steeves This early morning, I'm sitting in front of my wood stove that has been burning non-stop this winter, as I look out onto a fresh blanket of snow in the woods behind my house.  More snow is swirling through the branches and there's the promise of more to come. It brings a profound silence that sound-absorbent layer of snow. I'm thinking about the power of silence and the Silent Retreat I did last weekend at Loyola House , the Jesuit Centre in Guelph, Ontario.  There were nearly 50 others in the retreat.  We had pleasantly cozy single rooms with carpeted floors, a desk,   a sink and a big comfortable chair.  We didn't speak at all for the weekend, not in hallways, by the fireplace in the lounge or at meals.  Having the limitation of silence made time expand. The retreat centre holds a sense of the sacred, and there is something deeply profound about sharin...

Green 5'x 6' oil/cold wax on canvas  ©2013 Janice Mason Steeves I'm preparing for an exhibition in November, at the  Burlington Art Centre  in Burlington, ON, a beautiful public gallery located on the western end of Lake Ontario. As is so often the case with art, if you can allow the process to unfold and trust that it will, amazing things can happen.  I believe that art is it's own spiritual journey. The paintings in this series have led me on such a journey. Last spring, Denis Longchamps, the Director of Programs, asked to come to my studio to see how the work was progressing. I had an idea for the show and had begun work on it. I had been working on a series of paintings I called Lines of Desire.  This series was an inner journey, where I was exploring my feelings related to the sudden life-threatening illness of a close friend. Denis liked the direction I was going and suggested we meet sometime in September to select work for the sh...