My ongoing series of paintings explores weather, islands and chaos.

My work in general strives for a rawness, speed and intensity in speaking of the land and my connection to it, but always referring to paint and place .As a painter and photographer I work in downtown Toronto (Artscape studio), Up North (Sudbury) and in Newfoundland.

My paintings are begun on site in order to capture an immediate sense of place and to map the actual physical topography of rocks, plywood, earth, docks or a 100 year old Newfoundland floor .( I travel with my rolled canvas in a snowboarding case.)

Using a mixture of acrylic and ashes over graphite rubbings my elemental and internal connection to place becomes a physical dance as I layer my marks working with the surprise of paint and canvas and seeking through the chaos and randomness a sense of landscape, energy and beauty.

Steenberg’s newest paintings continue “her rigorous conceptual renovation of what it means to depict the elusive magic of place” [ Anchor in the Sky: The Art of MJ Steenberg by Donald Brackett, visual arts critic, curator and writer]