Keira McArthur

The broader, wiser me is an old sea captain. Patiently, she charts new shifts in internal weather systems, navigates unfamiliar waters.

The slap of water on leaves is distinct from the thunk onto porch roof, from the plop into backyard puddle. The shearing sound of tires on wet streets, a muffled steady thrum onto asphalt tiles above my head… rainfall is a language as broad as any other. David G Haskell inspires in me a new […]

Dunno what this is, the feeling of being caught in stories that play out for all in the world to see. I am Ms Heard and Mr Depp, both. I am the children & teachers gone, the shooter and the shooter’s mother. Shamed and shaming, scared, resigned and distorted in the hot light of fame […]

Off-grid at the shore reminds me I’m tougher than I think. April’s like a magic pre-shoulder season secret – best time to cut the winter’s deadfall for the wood stove, to see the curve of the forest floor, and feel the full moonlight – silver – on my face. Cozy warm, writing and drawing in […]

Equinox, and me so tight in the grip of this intense yearning. I want with all my heart to experience a big, booming rightness in us, as humans. A miracle of laying down of arms, of dropping our programmed, distorted behaviours. I ache in every cell of my being for us to be kind, to […]

Spring bird song, gentle grey sky, trees in a slow sway at their crowns. I’ve been to the studio to print my reference for the trees that line English Bay in Vancouver, those trees that populated my sunset meals last week – silhouettes against the golden light in a dance too slow for us to […]

It comes in Waves, and each wave is a new teacher. Is this Grief? In any case, these are deeply teachable moments for me. For weeks now I’ve experienced a considerable amount of pain in my left shoulder, especially intense as I lie down to sleep. Tendonosis, I’m told, by the physiotherapist. My tendons have […]

Winds push the leaves around like dancers at a grand ball so the sunlight sweeps over my walls and the backyard trees sway dramatically at the back window. The prevailing westerlies far above this blow a ceiling of bruised-bellied clouds eastward until they gather their heavy and position themselves just so, a stillness-before, an intake […]

But there’s …more. Feels like there’s more that I can’t quite see from here.

I read stories these days of people who are leaving bad jobs, tired relationships, selling house and/or business and hitting the road in trailers or camper vans: conscious, well-considered decisions to unhook from old programming and step forward into a new sense of freedom. That can mean anything.

Ah the warm golden morning sun, full on my face. This apartment, where I’ve lived and worked through thirty months of this Hamilton Residency experiment has housed me gracefully and generously. There’s enough space here to hang a show of twenty-one smaller pieces and several more larger ones. There are two beautiful trees in the […]