Keira McArthur

The morning is still still and grey weighed down by two feet of spring snow.  Even the sky is heavy.  The birds do their best to lighten things up but we have no warm welcome for them this year after the long flight north.  Just heavy grey, heavy snow, covered in old rabbit tracks. It […]

Ahhh.  I’m coming back to earth after these weeks of rehearse practise teach perform travel teach record rehearse.  It’s barely seven in the morning, and there’s enough daylight outside to watch the fine fine fall of snow.  I find it comforting.  It’s as if each snowflake is a simple thought that has been sifted into […]

Rehearsing and conversing with the highly engaged and engaging pianist Marc Pierre Toth and composer Richard Mascall last night, the day after dinner with pianist, singer-songwriter, electronic artist and visual artist and dear dear friend Kati Gleiser – and snowshoeing with her today.  Talk  – of Shanghai, Japan, Hannover, my neice Anna in Germany, The […]

Open-faced and shovel-sore, I stare out the window at a thousand-thousand demons of whirling, whipped snow.  I think about beauty, and the job of art. If there can be a line we take towards healing the terrible distortions of our belief systems, I think it must be drawn by artists.  There can be no measured, […]

I’ve had early morning conversation with one of my rarely seen Incredibles, who is now off to work.  Two others flop in their beds – they will be vertical, and then verbal, soon. but hang on – the snow is blowing from left to right through the alleyway behind my head.  Horozontal snow is normal […]

A fog-laden wind sifts through tree boughs to the northwest.  Into my left ear the presto drip of snowmelt on metal roof is punctuated by a random slide, thunk of heavier stuff pulled to ground.  On my lap, the steady, thundering purr of kitten. The dark outside is thick with visible air, like stirred winter […]

… but not yet in depth, about these paintings, this exhibition project.  If my mind were a light table, it would be stacked with disparate ideas superimposed one over the other  – I’m squinting to see what composite images appear from behind and through – negative and positive. A sample from the stack: the distorted […]

The studio is dark. I am entirely at peace in this space – made small and comfortable by the light of one candle.  Muffled, intermittent cars drive north or south through slush outside and I stare out my big, arched third floor window at headlights, streetlights, house lights.  The clock ticks like a slow walk. […]

My desk is in a new place – not sure I like it yet. To my right, a pile of ash and cherry lumber, drywall, moor vents, a roll of typar, a garbage bag full of roxyl & strips of R20 styrofoam.  A rolled-up rug, boxes of Christmas decorations from 2 years ago. To my […]

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 […]

In art school we talked about negative space – the less obvious part of any picture that does the most to define the subject.  When building a 3D illusion on a 2-dimensional plane this is one of the neatest tricks – to first define what’s NOT in the drawing, in order to clarify what is. […]