Keira McArthur

In the lane to my cabin there is a tall spruce tree, planted by my parents in the 80s. I believe this is an American Bittern on his way through, spring 2022.

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 […]

These times.  Ukraine, Palestine, homeless people in our streets, broken hearts, and some folks just …stuck. I hear news like the hit and run death of Boris Brott and what was a level floor turns into a 45 degree pitch. We carry heavy things in these times and hearts are cracking open.  Steady on.  There […]

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.