Keira McArthur

I’ve just read a useful description of art, especially for these times: that it is always an invitation to step back and observe the world from a different perspective. There are so many viewpoints from which to understand any given thing and most of the time we are too close to actually see, too busy […]

Equinox, and me so tight in the grip of this intense yearning. I want with all my heart to experience a big, booming rightness in us, as humans. A miracle of laying down of arms, of dropping our programmed, distorted behaviours. I ache in every cell of my being for us to be kind, to […]

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 […]

For Fran, 1936-2022.

tangled stories can turn into useful things like a baby’s quilt, or carrot ginger soup. I Unpack the puzzle pieces and lay them out where I can see them, imagine them entwined, differently, in a new conversation.

Winds push the leaves around like dancers at a grand ball so the sunlight sweeps over my walls and the backyard trees sway dramatically at the back window. The prevailing westerlies far above this blow a ceiling of bruised-bellied clouds eastward until they gather their heavy and position themselves just so, a stillness-before, an intake […]

Three days at the cabin, full moon, gentle lake, a tree frog chorus every night, the loons calling, and trumpeter swans. Feeling much better than I did.

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

I read stories these days of people who are leaving bad jobs, tired relationships, selling house and/or business and hitting the road in trailers or camper vans: conscious, well-considered decisions to unhook from old programming and step forward into a new sense of freedom. That can mean anything.

Ah the warm golden morning sun, full on my face. This apartment, where I’ve lived and worked through thirty months of this Hamilton Residency experiment has housed me gracefully and generously. There’s enough space here to hang a show of twenty-one smaller pieces and several more larger ones. There are two beautiful trees in the […]