Keira McArthur

It’s a thing I love about us, possibly why I love playing music that is never the same twice; humans change over time, especially when challenged to wake up and out of the comfort zone slumber.

One tree drops a walnut just a breath before my head would have been there. I pick it up – green, cracked open by the hard path – and wonder at measurements of time. Permanence, confinement, illusion, the cross-currents of loss and gain, the rhythm of my breath.

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 […]

Lunar Eclipse, good friends, Czech Porcelain from WWII, my uncertainty, The Starling on the wire. Today feels good.

…Fuelled by these wonders my work in studio has produced inks and fabric dyed with colours from ten different trees, a buffet of interesting resist experiments and paper dyed for book works.

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 […]

Thoughts from the morning couch, while I watch them climb and trim one of my morning trees. It’s pretty drastic, what they’re doing. I do hope they’re not cutting it down entirely. Twenty years ago after my third solo show (Sea Hear) I meet the man who would become my husband, on the phone. He […]

These times.  Ukraine, Palestine, homeless people in our streets, broken hearts, and some folks just …stuck. I hear news like the hit and run death of Boris Brott and what was a level floor turns into a 45 degree pitch. We carry heavy things in these times and hearts are cracking open.  Steady on.  There […]

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 […]