Janice Mason Steeves

Iceworks 48  12x15" Oil/cold wax on panel ©2018 Janice Mason Steeves Just a week ago, I was interviewed by Rebecca Crowell for her podcast: The Messy Studio. It was a very casual interview, especially because her "recording studio" in New Mexico where I was visiting her, was a blanket fort on the floor beside her bed! As I listened to the podcast last week when it was posted, I was reminded again how important the idea of play is in my own art practice. Click here to listen to the interview. Rebecca has observed that my work has a conceptual component and asked which comes first, the idea or the painting. I responded that it's always play that comes first, staying open to what wants to come through. No direction. No purpose. No worrying about whether anyone would like the work or not. Simply playing with materials. I realize I've written about play several times over the years. It still fascinates me: that state of not-knowingness. Of being open to ...

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...

How does a series come about? What is it that makes an artist want to follow a few paintings along to see where they lead? Is it simply making the decision to do so? Or is it something exciting about them that sparks other ideas? The current series I'm working on began at my artist residency at the Baer Art Center in Iceland in 2016. It took a few days to settle into the residency. As I walked the treeless farmland that hugs the coastline of Skagafjordur where the residency is located, I became fascinated with the dark and imposing cape. It would be an island except for two long bands of stones that join the cape to the mainland on either side, creating a freshwater lake in the centre with a black sand beach.  Seen from the water, the cape is a breathtaking expanse of basalt columns that have formed into overlapping layers which flowed into various curved shapes as the volcanic columns were cooling long ago. I didn't interpret this landscape directly, bu...

Last week I visited my artist friend, Rebecca Crowell  in New Mexico. Rebecca and her husband Don Ticknor have bought a property  north of Santa Fe, which Don is renovating and restoring.  Rebecca and I will be teaching a painting workshop in northern Spain in September and we needed time together to work on it. We spent part of each morning throwing ideas back and forth about the format of the workshop and came up with some creative plans. I realize that so many ideas I have come from books I've read about art and the creative process or TED talks or the podcast ON Being with Krista Tippett or simply talking to people. For example, in my workshops that take place in beautiful landscapes,  I often have my students choose a 'sit spot' outdoors, where they sit every day for 15 or 20 minutes to simply observe. This idea came from an outdoor workshop my daughter took with Jon Young, author, wildlife tracker and naturalist, who developed the daily sit spot p...

Walking the dog through newly fallen snow. There's silence in the world.  I don't notice it at first. Head down. Thinking of things I must do. The dog runs ahead, scooting under the low branches of cedars lining the path. Chasing rabbits. I hear the squeak of cold dry snow under my boots as I walk, the swoosh of my sleeves against my down coat. He runs over to me, wagging, then bounds back onto the path, delighting in the cold and the snow. We walk farther into the woods along a narrow path I've made over time. My pace slows. My thoughts become still. I lift my head. The sun is low, slanting through trees making long blue shadows. I stand there. In awe. Breathing in the silence. IN 2018 MAY YOU PAUSE TO SEE THE WONDER.

My workshops are filled with (mostly) women, who are in the 50-75 year-old range. They are coming to art with a vengeance and an impatience, having recently discovered or rediscovered their creativity after years of working in other jobs. On the one hand, it's a huge pleasure to teach them because of their burning desire to learn. On the other, many appear to be under an enormous amount of pressure. Time pressure. There is a sense that they don't have time to waste. Christine Brutin Linda Virio Sharon Helleman How can I teach them to slow down, to have patience with themselves, with the process? One exercise I do, if I'm teaching in a beautiful location, is to have the students go outside first thing in the morning. I ask them to pick a spot where they will sit for 20 minutes each day while asking themselves some contemplative questions. Then they come quietly into the studio and do 4 small paintings. Anne Jackson One of the women in th...

Iceworks 28 12x30" Oil/cold wax/sand on paper on panel © 2017 Janice Mason Steeves Jon Kabat-Zinn in his book, Mindfulness for Beginners , identifies seven fundamental attitudes of mindfulness, all of which apply to painting. They are: non-judging, patience, beginner's mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance and letting go.  Non-judging It's so easy to judge ourselves every step of the way in painting whether we're a beginning artist or a more advanced one. One of my recent students berated herself continuously for two and a half days of my three-day workshop. She was extremely frustrated that her work wasn't going as she had planned, even though she'd only been painting for a year, and was new to the cold wax and oil process I was teaching. I urged her to be more gentle with herself but she seemed unable to stop. Finally, on the third day, when she was totally frustrated and ready to listen, I suggested that she work very quickly, without think...