Janice Mason Steeves

Silence 11  24x24"  oil/cold wax on panel ©  2012 Janice Mason Steeves In painting this series, I work (mostly) without using any tools or brushes.  I choose the colours I intend to work with, mix up many gradations and have them ready on the palette.  I wear latex gloves on my hands.  I've been going through many many pairs for each painting because I either have to wipe them carefully each time I change colours, or put on a new pair. Then I  put my fingers into the paint, rubbing my hands together to spread the paint evenly on my palms and fingers.  Sometimes I even mix the paint right on my hands…dipping say into one colour and then into another colour and then blending them as I rub my hands together.   I love the intensity of the physical contact with the paint and with the surface.  There is a quiet patting sound as I apply the paint.  The sound of silence perhaps.  I began my art career as a pott...

Silence Red 1    36x40"  oil/mixed media on panel©2012  Janice Mason Steeves  In my last blog post , I wrote about painting for an audience and how difficult I find that.  Interestingly, since writing that post, I've started to read a book called Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain.  My need to paint in privacy I learn is very much an introverted way of being and creating in the world.  My introverted self just doesn't want to paint in public. This book is helpful to me in understanding this. Cain writes, "From 1956-1962, an era best remembered for its ethos of stultifying conformity, the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a series of studies on the nature of creativity. They assembled a list of architects, mathematicians, scientists, engineers and writers who had made major contributions to their fields and...

Silence 2   50x50"   oil/cold wax on panel ©2012 Janice Mason Steeves How can you paint when someone is watching? I am commenting here on the recent blog post written by my colleague and great friend, Rebecca Crowell.   Rebecca can somehow manage to focus on her own work during the painting time in her workshops.  And do some serious paintings too!  She finds this to be  a learning tool for the class and is not at all bothered by the audience. I work in a totally different way.  I am able to demonstrate for my students and experiment in the workshops I teach, but I seem unable or perhaps unwilling to paint in the classes.  While Rebecca views her painting process as a learning tool (and I honour her viewpoint),  I see it in a different light.  I hesitate to paint in my classes, mostly because it is not my nature, and partly because I think it is important for my students to struggle to find their own voices....

 "Quiet"   30x30"  Oil, cold wax on panel  ©2012 Janice Mason Steeves As well as teaching painting in my workshops,  I encourage students to think beyond themselves in their work and consider the idea of the artist as visionary.   I talk about the possibility of art as being more than a reflection of current society.  When I googled 'artist as visionary', Wikipedia and many other sites, translate my phrase as Visionary Art.  "Visionary Art  is art  that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences."  Another link was to The American Visionary Art Museum, which defines Visionary art as "....art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself."  But I'm not speaking of art that is do...

I saw the exhibition 60 Painters last week at Humber College Art and Media Studio in Etobicoke, just the day before the exhibition closed.  The show was described as "  the most ambitious overview of contemporary Canadian painting in recent memory. The artists are a mixture of emerging artists and very well established artists. Some of the artists are within the first few years of their practice while others are in their third or fourth decade of exhibiting."  The exhibition was organized by Scott Sawtell , an instructor at the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and at Brock University in St. Catharine's. The show was spread over 12,000 sq feet of space at Humber College's art and Media Studios, winding in and out of classrooms, hallways, theatres and film studios. The statement on the wall at the entrance to the exhibition read, in part: "We now live in an age where information and imagery operate with unrivalled speed and vastness.  It is be...

24x24" oil on panel © 2012 Janice Mason Steeves I'm in the process of making a lot of decisions.  I am making reservations to go to Cill Rialaig , my artist's residency in Ireland in October.  Afterwards,  I'll travel on to Scotland to visit my relatives who live near Aberdeen.  Then I'll go to the island of Iona for Quiet Week,  a program which will involve meditation, sharing and contemplative prayer.  I have many, many small decisions to make about flights, places to stay, where to leave my big suitcase full of art supplies so I don't have to lug it around Scotland. Those sorts of things.  I am thinking today about the process of decision-making in life and in art. This reminds me of a story my daughter once told me.  She was working at a camp in western Canada. She and her friend had gone into town for groceries.  As she was nearing the checkout, she was hesitating to decide which checkout had the shortest line....back and forth...

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...