Janice Mason Steeves

Recently I was interviewed by Amy Guion Clay for her blog post on Artist/Travellers. Amy is an inveterate traveller and has gone to 17 artist residencies in the past number of years. When I first found her blog in 2011,  I was heading off to an artist residency in Can Serrat, Spain. Amy had just been there and was on her way to residencies around the world in a year she devoted to travel. Currently she's been to 17 artist residencies and has recently released an online video program  teaching all about artist residencies. She interviewed me because of my long-standing interest in art and travel. You can read the interview here. Cill Rialaig artist residency, Ireland. Out on Bolus Head with the Skellig Islands in the distance One's destination is never a place, but always a new way of seeing things.  Henry Miller

Iceworks 55  oil/cold wax on panel 12x23" © 2018 Janice Mason Steeves I taught a cold wax painting workshop in abstraction this past week at St. Lawrence College in Brockville, Ontario. I've never had so many beginners in one class before. Two had never ever painted. One hadn't painted in 4 years. Three made art using other media. Only two painted regularly in landscape and abstraction. What a challenge! In our morning discussions, I gradually came to understand that the main challenge each artist had to face, was their vulnerability. Of course this is the case in every class. I suppose I was more clearly made aware of it though in this workshop.  As an artist, you come up against yourself all the time. There's no way to hide who we really are.  " I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one." John Steinbeck I've written many time...

Iceland As I'm exploring potential wild, remote locations for art workshops, I'm learning what sort of landscape I most resonate with. According to the huge interest I've received for these potential workshops though, the idea of travel to out-of-the-way places has struck a chord with many others also.  What is it about being in wild and relatively silent locations ( in a world where wild and silent places are becoming increasingly fewer)  that draws us in? I'm rereading Sara Maitland's A Book of Silence . After challenging herself to spend 40 days alone and in silence in a remote cabin on the Isle of Skye, Maitland, described the experience and went on to explore many levels and kinds of silence. "I began to realise", Maitland wrote "that it was not peace and contentment that I craved, but that awed response to certain phenomena of the 'natural' world in which words, and even normal emotional reactions fail". She goes on t...

I love to travel to wilderness locations such as the ones I described in my previous  blog post , where one can be overwhelmed by the size of the landscape and feel for a time, completely alone, lost in the vastness. It's partly to do with the silence in such landscapes, where you can almost hear your heartbeat. Northern Sweden Northern Sweden I consider the idea of visiting remote places an aid to helping artists develop a more mindful response to the land, and as well, to find a visual vocabulary to express that connection. Mindfulness is the key. Not only being mindful of your own body, feelings and thoughts, but becoming mindfully aware of nature. And then, finding ways to creatively express that connection. I find it so easy when I go for a walk to forget about where I am and think about my problems, or worries or get lost in daydreams. Iona, Scotland Iona, Scotland Iceland Iceland There are many ways of developing a sense of place. One way t...

SCOTLAND Dunskey Castle, Scotland One thing I love to do is to organize workshops in gorgeous retreat centres or lodges or castles in remote areas of the world.  The intention in each of the workshops listed below, is to invite students, through various exercises and outdoor meditations, to connect with the landscape, to carry home that connection and translate it into abstract paintings. Contemplation, writing and painting are ways of connecting with and honouring the land. My friend  Rebecca  Crowell and I are finalizing plans to co-teach a workshop in a magnificent castle in Scotland, south of Glasgow in September 2019. Located near the sea, it has stunning views from the art studio on the top floor and 2000 acres of beautiful grounds to wander, including 2 lochs. We will stay in the West Wing. Registration for this workshop will open in September 2018.   www.dunskey.com NEWFOUNDLAND I'm in the process of planning a cold wax ...

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...