I Had a Sweater This Colour ©Janice Mason Steeves 2011 My work of the past year has been one of going into the studio with no preconceived idea of what I will do. I enter in a spirit of play I am balancing the technical skills I have learned over many years as an artist in one hand, with the idea of knowing nothing in the other. "The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing ." This quotation, attributed to Hemingway, (or was it Henry Miller?) is about this balancing point of knowing it all and knowing nothing. In the excellent book, The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharpe , she says, "You cannot manufacture inexperience, but you can maintain it." "In it's purest form, inexperience erases fear. You do not know what is and is not possible and therefore everything is possible". There is a surrender to the process, a giving up of control to the dialogue between