Janice Mason Steeves

Lines of Desire 1358   12x12"   Oil/cold wax on panel  © Janice Mason Steeves   Everything we do and hear and see integrates itself into a work of art if we can find the connecting threads. And that artwork in turn can inform us about ourselves.  I went to hear a talk a couple of weeks ago by John Philip Newell , author of the book, New Harmony, the Spirit, the Earth and the Human Soul. He was the Warden of Iona Abbey in Scotland for many years.  He spoke about Celtic Christianity which holds the belief in the interconnectedness of all things and the pivotal importance of the feminine.  That sacred feminine he says, is essential in the healing of  our world today. This past week, a friend invited me to consider the story of Inanna-a strong, sensual and powerful Goddess who was worshipped in ancient Sumeria-and the journeys she took to recover  sacred powers to give to civilization. This led me to pull out  my books on mythology,...

Lines of Desire 1351    60 x 72"  Oil/Cold wax on canvas  © 2013 Janice Mason Steeves I am interested in paths.  Trails that emerge from human or animal footfall are called Lines of Desire.  It is the name that landscape architects give to those spontaneous narrow paths-the shortcuts- that people make across fields, or woodlands that do not follow the paved walkways.  Sometimes called social pathways, they have been created over time by people repeatedly walking the same track. I 'm calling my new body of work, Lines of Desire to indicate the path that I am travelling throughout this series and the route I have travelled to get to this work. It is the same title I gave to an earlier body of work.  I wanted to revisit the idea.  My work has always been influenced by the idea of place-whether it be the sacred places/pilgrimage sites that have drawn me to various countries, the prairies where I grew up, the land I live on now, or ...

New Work 1334    30x30"   oil/cold wax on panel  © 2013 Janice Mason Steeves New Work 1335   16x16"  oil/cold wax on panel © 2013 Janice Mason Steeves Red 1   16x16"  oil/cold wax on panel ©2013 Janice Mason Steeves I am reading the wonderful book, Daring Greatly by Bren é  Brown.  She writes of vulnerability. She describes it as the experience of uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure that we face every day. Vulnerability isn't weakness, she says, but "it is, in truth, our most accurate measure of courage."  I think of the work I am currently doing and how different it is from the work of the past year.  This past year, I worked on a series I called Silence. There is an urgent importance I feel, in finding quiet space in our lives and in our work.  It's vital as well to create quiet spaces in our paintings, where we allow breath to enter.  This felt like a series I could work on for years. ...

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, ...

I taught a  workshop this past weekend in the stunningly beautiful arts centre called Visual Arts Mississauga. It's a very contemporary building set on the forested grounds of Riverwood, a 150 acre park in the centre of Mississauga. Our classroom studio had floor to ceiling windows  looking onto a long expanse of snowy  forest.  Ours was a small class of only 5 students which allowed a lot of time for individual attention.  I continue to be amazed at how each person's work is so different from the next.  Always our goal in art is to find our own voice.  I like to remind artists that it's already there, you can see that when you look around the room, even on the first day of a workshop, when people are just beginning to learn about cold wax and oil.  As we continue to grow and work and develop more technical and compositional skills our voices grow stronger and clearer.  There were many breakthroughs in this workshop as ...

A Quiet Place 2  16x16" Oil/cold wax on paper © 2013 Janice Mason Steeves A few weeks ago,  Rebecca Crowell and I wrote a co-blog post about Visual Language and the Art of Critique.   Later on, I  posted a followup conversation called Writing, Creativity and Critique: A Conversation , with two writer friends of mine:  Kim Echlin and Sandra Campbell , who meet regularly to give feedback and support to each other in their work.  They commented on how crucial this sort of feedback is to them. I received a number of emails in response to both blog posts.  One thing that came up in various ways was a general sense of fear at going through this process.  Perhaps the fear is justified because of harsh feedback from an instructor in the past.  But people also wondered if their work would be honoured for what they were trying to say and if suggestions for change would affect them negatively.  Many feared that putting words to this...

Silence Red 7  42x42" oil/cold wax on panel  © 2013 Janice Mason Steeves Two weeks ago, Rebecca Crowell and I decided to write a co-blog post   in a conversational format, about Visual Language and the Art of Critique.   That conversation sparked many thoughtful comments, some of which were posted here on my blog and some of which were sent to me personally. Two of my writer friends, Sandra Campbell and Kim Echlin wrote comments about the interconnections between intuition, technique and critique that I felt were too important to be hidden away in the comments section of the blog post.  I asked them if we could continue this conversation about how writer's work with feedback. Sandra Campbell' s novel  Getting to Normal (www.sandracampbell.ca) was NOW Toronto magazine’s choice for best books 2001. Her new work,  The Pig and the Soprano , inspired by the life of Georgina Stirling, is a tale of the 19th century soprano who dared a...