Janice Mason Steeves

Iceworks 44  12x15"  Oil/cold wax on panel  ©2018 Janice Mason Steeves Iceworks 45  Oil/cold wax on panel ©2018 Janice Mason Steeves Last fall I started a series of blog posts based on John Kabat-Zinn's 7 attitudinal foundations of mindfulness from his book: "Mindfulness for Beginners".  I thought it would be interesting to look at the relationship of  these 7 fundamentals to painting. Trust is one of them.  In a personal story, as some of you know, I had two consecutive knee replacements in 2017.  Much of 2016 and most of 2017 was spent in pain and then later, healing. By the fall of 2017, I was back in action. However, during the healing process, I had a bit of a crisis of faith. Faith in myself to continue to create. Normally I have pretty continuous creative ideas. They arrive like pictures in my mind. Unlike Agnes Martin who had  a separate vision for each painting,  I seem to get pictures in my mind of a series...

I've never  had much down time between the various series I've painted. One series of paintings generally followed another, with only short breaks between them, except for a couple of times I stopped my studio work for minor health issues. I always felt it was a simple matter of discipline and drive as well as that mysterious hook that kept pulling me back into the studio. The creative process always kept me full and enriched, no matter how much painting I did in a day, or even if the work was going nowhere. Until now. For the past 2 1/2 years I've been troubled with very sore knees; bone on bone said the orthopaedic surgeon who recommended total knee replacements for both knees. Wanting to avoid surgery, I pursued a number of alternative routes until I could stand the pain no longer. I've just recently emerged from knee replacement surgery, wondering why I didn't do it sooner. During this long process, I've learned to have great compassion for p...