Fragile 18 29x29" oil/cold wax on panel ©2014 Janice Mason Steeves Sitting in my somewhat beaten-up but oh-so-comfortable studio chair the other day, considering a painting I was working on, I began to think of earlier work I had done that had some similarity to this new work. I pulled out an old slide album from 1992. I documented my paintings with slides in those days. In 1992 I made my first foray into abstraction, spurred on by a trip to Baffin Island in Canada's arctic. I had the good fortune that year to travel with the well-known Canadian landscape painter, Doris McCarthy. We travelled to Pond Inlet in the month of January when the sun had not yet returned to the arctic. The thermometer in the window of our church/home remained at a steady -40C (which is the same as -40F)....maybe it was frozen at that temperature. The wind chill took it to a place that was beyond reckoning. Doris was 82 years old then a...