Keira McArthur

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 […]

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

The Artist talk for my Conversation Pieces July 2021 show is all around me in …pieces. A story about my Dad, a memory from the Mary Schneider School of Art at age 13. Some bits about Toxic Ego Art I encountered at York University in the early 80s, and how for a long tragic time […]

I am not been feeling generous with humans of late. Maybe because I’ve read and signed and shared more petitions than I can count over the last week. Myanmar’s big-oil supported military shooting at citizens, Trans Canada Pipelines & TC Energy’s horribly distorted value systems, the fact that we only protect TEN PERCENT of our […]

I cannot imagine my life without the experience of the Cotton Factory artist residency. On all levels – personal, professional, academic, philosophical and physical (since I have now moved my work and my life here) – it continues to enrich, expand and amplify my world. Residencies are transformative things, I’ve learned. In some ways, contradictory, […]

When I told dad I would present my final masters research (with some bad-assery) in ten days, all the terrible anxiety and fear vanished from his face. He smiled. He is in the final, non-verbal stage of dementia, frustrated beyond imagining that he has no words and only emotion, no time, only an endless Now […]

Lightning: it is wise not to make a target of yourself. I’m informed here by the following list of encounters, ideas and experiences, as far as I can name them in the moment: J.F. Martel, Guy Laramee, Brian Eno, Kate Raworth, Rebecca Solnit, Greta Thurnburg, Werner Herzog, my Masters study of Community Music, Rutger Bregman, […]

Manifesto woman does not know what to do next. Baffling. Maddening. Humbling. Ego-flattening. Intensely educational. I’ve made at least twenty clear plans for these pieces in the past three months of this residency, and the only one that has lasted the duration is Surrender. I’m thinking this is at the root of what’s happening here. The […]

The overwhelm subsides into a kind of rhythm as I begin to understand what my new job is; what feels unfamiliar but is actually okay. As the illusion clears – of pitfalls and boobytraps at every misstep – I can see that the floor I walk on every day is sturdy, reliable… and beautiful. The […]