Janice Mason Steeves

Brice Marden  Second Letter (Zen Spring)   Oil on linen    96 x 144 " After teaching my workshop at MISSA on Vancouver Island in July, I visited my artist friend, Barbra Edwards on Pender Island.  She was reading a book about the American abstract artist, Brice Marden, written by Eileen Costello.  I picked up a copy of the book when I came home. I love connections and interconnections between people and ideas and events. In my last post ( click here ),  I wrote about my brush explorations workshop, where I painted with red cedar brushes and ink, creating calligraphic forms.  In reading Eileen Costello's book on Brice Marden, I was excited to learn how Chinese calligraphy had such an enormous influence on his work. Another connection I had to Marden's work was that he was a pioneer in the use of cold wax medium and oil paint.  He was working with it for years before Gamblin started manufacturing it.  From 1965-1981...

One brush stroke     Ink on Paper, 16x20" -Janice Mason Steeves 2013 Two days before I taught my Abstract Painting workshop at MISSA on Vancouver Island, I took a 2-day class called Brush Explorations.  The workshop was taught by Lorne Loomer, a long-time teacher of brush painting who was deeply influenced by the West Coast artist/mystic, Jack Wise. It was so enjoyable being a student for a change and experimenting with painting/calligraphy.  Our first task was to make our own brush.  Lorne provided us with red cedar bark that had washed up on a Vancouver Island beach.  We were to take the bark outside with us as we searched for a stone that spoke to us.  With that stone, we were to beat the red cedar bark into a brush, loosening all the fibres until we had a very spindly, feathery-looking object that we were to use as a brush.  My bark split into several pieces so I ended up with four brushes of various sizes. Back inside, we ...

Lines of Desire 1368  8x8"  Oil/cold wax on panel © 2013 Janice Mason Steeves  July was a busy month of teaching Abstract Painting with cold wax and oil workshops:  a 5-day workshop at Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts on Vancouver Island, a 3-day workshop in Vancouver and then another 5-day workshop at the Haliburton School of the Arts in Ontario. While I teach the technique of working with cold wax with oil,  my workshops are about painting.   I try to make the structure of my workshops very simple and clear.  It's a step-by-step process, each day building toward the next day.  Five-day workshops add a slowness to the pace that is difficult to create in a 3-day workshop.  It takes a couple of days for students to settle into the process-learning a new technique and then letting go of expectations that a painting should be produced in the first two days.  I think that one of the most important messages I was ...

From Cill Rialaig  12x112" acrylic on canvas © 2012 Janice Mason Steeves There are always threads aren't there, that connect one thing and another in our lives.  I wrote last week about the threads that connected many events in my life that week.  This week I found some new connections. In preparing a slide presentation for Metchosin International Summer School of the Arts near Victoria, BC, where I'll be teaching next week, I've been looking at images of the paintings I did at my artist residency at Cill Rialaig in Ireland last fall.  I haven't looked at the work for a while and in fact tended to dismiss it as only experimental work.  I've put it on a shelf in my studio and haven't looked at it since I came home last December.  My artist talk is about Journeys: a short version of how I came to be doing the work I'm doing now-where it came from, what influenced it, and what I learn from it. Sometimes we don't know the strength of a pai...

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. ...