Gorky's Granddaughter: Jake Berthot, June 2012

Gorky's Granddaughter: Jake Berthot, June 2012

EXPLORING DAVID MILNE

David Milne "Painting Place 111" 1930 oil on canvas 51.5x60.4cm

David Milne,s paintbox

Loving the strength and beauty within the restrained palette of this painter of genius.

"The thing that 'makes' a picture is the thing that 'makes' dynamite - compression" David Milne
"Art is love", wrote Milne. "but not love of a man, or child, or love of a woman, not love of nature, or love of country or of mankind, it is just love, love without an object, a spilling of the oil of love"

REMEMBERING ADRIENNE RICH 1929-2012

I remember Adrienne Rich as a powerful mentor of visionary clarity. Her wisdom will always be with me. As my friend the poet Shauna Paull says; "her language holds us together in our work and our singing".

Here is a piece I wrote two years ago:

for Adrienne Rich

In the year of her Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry

lifetime achievement award

Lemon trees in twilight. Dusk bruising the cadmium fruit

with purple shadow

In that golden hour light soothed

like a hand

your face in profile as we sat together

on your covered verandah, silently conversing.

I was just a kid who couldn’t find her tongue,

who couldn’t breathe

too shy to stay inside,

to join the voices of poets gathered

in your home

to speak of politics, injustice, the erasure of women,

words and power

Dream(s) of a Common Language.

Together, long ago, evening coming down

quiet but for cicadas

squeak of your rocker, forward and back, time between us slow as a Southern river.

You knew nothing of me,

I was just a kid who wanted to confess

I still remember how deeply you listened, how you heard

my yearning

how, for a moment you held; “I write”

like holy communion

between us, your words slender thread in the dark

flowing unbroken into the future

“Keep on. Keep on writing”, you said

in that leafed temple of stillness.

And I have.

And I have, and you will never know what glow you left,

what fragment of fire embedded in my flesh. What seed, what ember undiminished has become the bright and sacred fruit, grown from this root the strong branch holding both the bitter and the sweet.

Gabryel Harrison

June, 2010

ART EXHIBITION IN PARNELL, AUCKLAND

FRAN-tastic trip to visit my beloved friends and gallerists in Parnell, at The International Art Center.

Painter's Bread: NEW SEAN SCULLY VIDEO: THE BLOODY CANVAS

Painter's Bread: NEW SEAN SCULLY VIDEO: THE BLOODY CANVAS: British director Richard Kendrick has completed a documentary on painter Sean Scully called The Bloody Canvas.

Sean Scully: Wall of Light from Arcadia Pictures on Vimeo.

ON THE WAY TO BURGOYNE BAY

In the grassland, stillness spilling
swallow’s flight unweighted, sprung to sky
this branch, this winged release
up, up, high hummingbird, dragonfly, goldfinch, swallow

memory of warmth, shard of stone holding snake
uncoiling shade at my feet black and gold garter disappearing
raven’s guttural clamshell call, fieldberry, forest of many layered darkness entering deep pine, hemlock, cedar calm sea of green
looking back at me
standing in the long grass with the ancestors beneath me.
Daisies on the mounded land waving white heads. Last requiem.
In the open meadow moves a deer and her fawn, flash
of robin’s vermillion breast startled up, eagles riding slow
circles of air, infinite charcoal ceiling of the world, this calligraphic scribe of stormcloud and light closing the distance between us
azure pools of your eyes.

Requiem For A Dream Lux Aeterna FULL ORCHESTRA