Keira McArthur

I’ve been ill and intensely insomnia’d recently – slowed down enough to obligingly revise my to-do lists from twenty things to one – or two if the gods are smiling.  In the in-between times, too tired to sleep or read or write or hold a thought long enough to notice what it is …. I’ve been […]

in this place between eclipse and equinox there is zero gravity before now started there was a certain weightedness planned routines ritualed paths weighted thoughts, articulate well crafted pauses since now began there’s the sense of being drawn- an animated character in a beloved story, drawn out. Danger here, but not much in the beautiful line of […]

March’s social media is a-twitter with #WomensHistoryMonth, #5WomenArtists… This question has arisen, from the thoughtful and compelling minds of the National Museum of Women’s Art NMWA in Washington, DC:  off the top of your head, can you name 5 women Artists, from any era?  I can, but then I’m a painter, and I studied art history […]

Good grief, it’s been a month since I’ve written.  I’ve come here, started, saved drafts even, but the inner writer part of me has been frozen. Now, after three weeks of transition and change on most every level I can think of, it’s day two of flu on the couch. To my great relief, the gears […]

My phone is in Kingston, 200 km of driving sleet and transport trucks ago. I travel through this with my daughter from my aunt to my niece. There’s a rightness to the timing. In the Museum of Civilization in Gatineau I find a plug upstairs after the cafe closes.  There’s a bench with cushions so I […]

The studio is different, this second day of 2016. It’s taking some time for the subtle but undeniably permanent changes to sink in.  Some can be identified now; the bell paintings I began in December ring at a new frequency – thirty-six hours from now they will finish in a way I hadn’t imagined.  There’s a kind […]

Three stories down, snow tires hiss past on the wet road.  Inside, forced air whistles throaty through the heating vent, then stops cold for smaller sounds, …the rhythmic click of keyboard keys – space bar like a tambourine in obscure african rhythm, voices in the hall (take note of who’s at work today). 11am, I haven’t […]

It’s the 18th of December, one week before Christmas day.  I’ve rehearsed and planned and delivered and engaged, I’ve painted and written and talked and sang and posted, I’ve cooked and sorted and laundered and cared-for and now all of a sudden on the eve of my first day off in what feels like centuries […]

First snow of the winter, we take a break and make double spirals on the soft wet of the roof, catch fat snowflakes on our faces, delighted again by the magic of change. Inside, the bells ring on… Metal on bell metal, glass on glass.  These sounds mark our hours, births, weddings, deaths.  They chime at our […]

Ah, the ever-changing dynamics of the ecosystem shared by Art and the Internet.  This has come up in every peer conversation, every artist statement, proposal and grant application I’ve written this month.  Think I’ll write an essay about it & post it here. But this is not my purpose right now.  I’ve been doing some […]

stare and stare at these paintings, make a choice to add paint, increase opacity, move a line, stare again and question and re-form my understanding of the work and my own approach to collaboration – what is changing?  why and how the change?  How can I follow – willingly submit to change myself, when I cannot see the future? […]

The soft November morning spills sun across these paintings that were born two days ago.  I awoke today into the same magic I felt as a child on Christmas:  bees, bells, and frequencies, all over my studio walls, all transforming into their new place in paint before my eyes. You owe me five farthings,  Say the bells of St. […]