Keira McArthur

Easter. Into a cave for three days, where you find the old stuff – the callouses, the excess, the muck and the clog.  You cut it all off or out, and let it go. Amazing how long three days can be, when you do this.  Amazing, how it feels to surrender to what you already […]

We were in my studio where almost every inch of wall, floor table and shelf is crammed with stuff in process and use, with tools, & paint & vine charcoal & buttons & books & thread & blank paper & other paper covered with notes or ideas or solo, duet, trio, quartet or orchestral music.  […]

..if you find a loose end, then follow the thread back to where they all connect to the same warp and weft, where the shuttle sails on,  left to right, right to left, and the pedals shift the taught colours up then not, then down again, humming. I can’t express how significant the changes in […]

8:30 pm, on the final day of 2012. I’m on the edge of a tiny old quarry in Canada, witnessing a light-battle between the  blazing-hot fire pit and the mostly full moon. It plays out on the foot-deep snow around us – the perfect contrast of indigo and gold. I have no words for this […]

The sense of openness continues long after Irene has gone to bed and been piped out of the park.  It’s as though the parade brought them home here through our house – Sarah Slean, Royal Wood, Oscar Lopez, the Lemon Bucket Orchestra, The Rwandan guys, The Powerful Women from New Zealand, The MacKenzie Blues Band […]

Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, Sheep May Safely Graze, Air in G, all the Brandenbergs, Arioso – playing these pieces is like eating home-made split-pea soup on the third day of chilly rain, book in hand, and a woodfire toasting your damp toes. Bach is ‘home’ to so many of us – harmonious, reassuring, refined, […]

It’s as good a time as any for reflection. 6am, still dark outside in the northern hemisphere. I sit at the downstairs table beside a pinging wood stove.  It’s beaming heat onto the cat, who’s a puddle of contentment. We began this house project in 2006 with the enthusiasm and energy of young saplings reaching […]