Keira McArthur

My studio is new and beloved.  The paintings, the sewings, the drawings and the music have all surged ahead after long weeks and months of stasis.  Patient, faithful and still, they have all waited like the good friends they are, for my return.

Ahhh.  So rich.

Bathed in sunlight I stand at one of my six big windows and listen to the conversations flowing through the room – Faure with a fabric artist guru from New Zealand about interesting new trends in upholstery;  Seamus Heaney with John Newton about Dan McGee’s gladiolus – that specific colour of luddite red; Ted Hughes roaring his laughter with hobbit-sized Edouard Bartlett about a sideways student who managed to astonish his audience; Sir Ken Robinson with my beloved Cow (a puppet made in Carnarvon 20 years ago) about the pleasures of a sharp pencil.

This morning a long-time friend and colleague sent this to me from her fridge:

Here’s a bio of ee. (1894–1962), who said this in summary of three final ‘non-lectures’ at Harvard University:

“I am someone who proudly and humbly affirms that love is the mystery-of-mysteries, and that nothing measurable matters ‘a very good God damn’; that ‘an artist, a man*, a failure’ is no mere whenfully accreting mechanism, but a givingly eternal complexity—neither some soulless and heartless ultrapredatory infra-animal nor any understandingly knowing and believing and thinking automaton, but a naturally and miraculously whole human being—a feelingly illimitable individual; whose only happiness is to transcend himself, whose every agony is to grow.”

So bless this Sunday full of sunlight and total engagement with the world.  I’m going to go and paint with Seamus now.

Be well, everyone.

K

(*He meant “human”, I am sure. )

here’s the poem again – yes, she’s got it right.:

yes but even
4 or(&h
ow)dinary
a
meri
can b
usiness soca
lled me
n dis…cussing “parity” in l’hô

tel nor
man(rue d
e l’échelle)
die can’tquite poison God’s sunlight