Three thoughts in early spring (painting)

Three thoughts in early spring- Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,

graphite, watercolor, and ballpoint pen on paper, 3/24/2018

Places of power and repose (new music)

There are places I can go to—woods, rivers, shorelines, high mountains—where the deep presence of something true arrives inside me. It often comes from the impossible approach of sounds that are almost a silence, a mystery.  For days, weeks, months afterward I carry these sounds inside. When the need is strong, I go to my studio and find ways to bring these sounds back, to share what I can of the gifts received in these places of power and repose.

Wheeler's Point (watercolor painting)

                                       Wheeler's Point- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
                                       watercolor and gouache on paper, 2018.

Painting the other day, and a memory surfaced as it took shape on the paper. It was fifteen or so years ago, a day spent with my mother, Patricia Macneil, in Gloucester, Massachusetts, her home town. We spent a drizzly spring day exploring, revisiting places and stories strong in her memory. For some reason I really wanted to find the place called Wheeler’s Point, and we ended up alongside the tidal, liminal wash of the Annisquam River. 

All this returned  about halfway through the process of  making this watercolor, and I had the sensation, as I moved the paint, of an old  Polaroid  paradoxically dissolving and developing at the same time. Two days later now, and I am grateful for the rising of this memory to the surface. -KMB