HEADING WEST

Moving to Arizona, June 2013.....

Invocation of the Ogham Trees

Invocation of the Ogham Trees

A strange bird sings through my sleep

Memories of ancient lyrical language

Wind in Ogham trees creaking in the vernal

Peeper frogs chant the stone doorway open in my body

I pull the painted cart through full of old villages

Through crisp leaves of winters past into spring

Garden snake and black ant holes below the moss

In the hollow log portal I release my honeyed invocation

Feet turned backwards I walk through the mirror

Between her breasts under the two mounds of my ancestors

With my seed of star dust entering the Milky Way

Our voices catch the up draft

 In the naming of things of power

Past mind and bones I step out of this drum skin

Riding the white horse with the bee staff of authority

I catch her world dreaming into mine

Tiompan being played with swan feathers

Telling me everything I should know

Horns flaming from my skull

In this ancient dance move

I remember the taking and giving of breath

Her weaving of the thousand songs I’ve longed to hear

A gifting of door ways into the heart she shines

Through my pores for all worlds to see

Bear that Wears the Bee Coat

I’m the bear that wears the bee coat

Each bee was a star

From the beginning of nights flow

My relatives follow me

Out of the ancient stone carving

We will dance with those

That know who they are.

If you want to be a spirit dancer

Dream everyday

And do your work at night

While sleeping in the cave

Of your skull

With your curving blade of thought

Harvest the heart

Beneath pendulum shadows

Breathe starlight fragments

Of your many soul wanderings

Exhale the blood map drift

Blue rivers between clouds

Wake up the grieving body

To the place of becoming

Reach the stone hearts ridge

Light a snow ringed fire

With flint and steel

Burning copal and sage

Chia seed and the old hornets nest

Through hanging bone and feather

We weep prayers into the earth

Smoke filled tree of life

With one branch down

So you’d raise your thoughts in the air

With human antlers uniting

The four quarters of the world

Winged hands raising energy

Clapping down echo’s in the valley

Petition and praise petition and praise

Bears bees and human antlered ones dance

In the quickening stillness of this poem

We release our dried sticks

That connected us to the shadows of others

Suspended like starfish in the dream world

Slowly spiraling to the center

We go our way together now

A new tribe in the fires of energy grids

Vast pilgrimage through the eyes

Of the ancestors who help keep this world together.

Driftwood Guitar

Stop listening to men and women with

Heads full of knowledge

Stepping over winter ice

Carrying treasure

Chests full of transient Shadows

Self important artifacts of passing drama

Hold counsel wise heart

In your fire lit stories

Seasons change in the melting

Become a driftwood guitar of salt-blood flames

Reaching far horizons where we live

In each others dreams

Reach back through the sun

Setting sunflower center piece

In the place of someone’s troubled heart

Those that have not made the bloom

Frozen in winter’s garden

From the strings and rhythm of deeper felt sense

Ride the crest of your wafting serpentine colors

A drifting sky is not without direction

Arrival on the green island

 Is a grain of sand in time

Get use to wind and tide

Visions implore you deeper

Song images playing through the eons

Of your wind swept memory tent

After I leave you in the dawn

I’ll be with you when I’m gone

Ease up trying to fill egos emptiness

With competitive need for attention and grasping

For more transient things to flatten the pain

The garden is exhausted from this perennial wanting

What message are you sending to the universe

When crowded in with ancestors and spirits love

Feed them something everyday

Gratitude and prayer offering to help

Open your heart

The world will dream of you

We will be together

As river mind and tree knowledge

Bear in your dream and cactus at dawn

A pony running for the apple

By the hearts stream

Star prayers keep your power

With judgment clean

Call wild passion courage out

Those who run or ridicule

Are not keepers of the flame

Fear not their time to ignite

Be the heart spoken mirror

Open inside out let’s see all of you

And you will see all of us

Ancestor spirit walkers

Through the veil

Lighter stories we weave

Wear this all of you

For your spring dance.

Art Show

Press Release - Art Show

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

EXHIBITION:     The Painted Story: New Work by Brian Brogan

DATES:                Saturday, April 13 through Friday, May 24, 2013

                              Opening Reception: Saturday, April 13, from 3 to 6 PM

Dreams and Indigenous Spirituality Inspire New Show at True North Gallery

HAMILTON, MASSACHUSETTS: From Saturday, April 13 through Friday, May 24, 2013, True North Gallery presents “The Painted Story: New Work by Brian Brogan.”

The paintings that North Shore artist Brian Brogan creates look more like art you would find in Santa Fe, New Mexico than New England. His large acrylic canvases have a bold palpable presence and an iconography that is both personal and archetypal. His art is inspired by dreams, visions, and indigenous traditions that celebrate humanity’s connection to the natural world. Animals, people, spirit creatures, mystical landscapes, and ritual healings are rendered in a pulsating and vibrant palette.  Brogan’s use of color enlivens his paintings with the kind of shamanic energy found in the yarn paintings of the Huichol people of Mexico. The characters and places are a part of Brogan’s developing personal cosmology, and yet there is something universal about them as well. His figures—birds, bees, deer, dogs, rabbits, and human forms (often adorned in indigenous garb or depicted in a transformational state partway between man and beast)—feel ancient and familiar. They call to mind the Yei spirits of the Navajo, and the Kachina spirits of Pueblo cosmology.

It’s no surprise that Brogan’s work is influenced by indigenous traditions from around the world. He spent more than two decades traveling and living in more than twenty countries. While living in the Far East, Brogan developed an interest in eastern philosophy, and studied Qi Gong and Feng Shui, two ancient Chinese practices related to energy and balance. Both of these disciplines continue to inform his art and life. Another influence on Brogan’s development as a visual artist was poetry. “Poetry opened me to Spirit, and Spirit lead me to painting. It was a fluid transition,” he explains.

Painting is a spiritual path for Brogan. His work is shaped by liminal states of consciousness in which he is receptive to ideas and imagery not as accessible in a rational, waking state. “When I paint, it’s all about balance,” Brogan reflects, “I try to hold the tension lightly, like when meditating. I’m here, but I’m also somewhere else.” For Brogan, both the process of painting and the paintings themselves are related to healing. He sees the work as an unfolding story about communal reciprocity between humanity, nature, and spirit.

“Brogan’s paintings invite the viewer to experience the world from the animistic perspective of his painted stories,” comments Belinda Recio, owner of True North Gallery. “People, animals, spirits, and the land are all alive and interconnected. When viewers engage the work,” Recio continues, “they become a part of the story, which opens the door to reconnecting with the more-than-human world.”

All work is for sale.  Directions to the gallery are available on True North’s website: www.truenorthgallery.net/directions.html

True North Gallery is open Wednesday through Saturday 10 to 5 PM and other times by chance or appointment. For additional information call (978) 468-1962 or email: gallerydirector@truenorthgallery.net

Hearing Your Prayers - Ancestors Rising

Spirit Energy Transmission

Singing the World into Being

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/News-from-THE-PAINTED-STORY.html?soid=1101338710841&aid=ZVW-Hl41LZw

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/News-from-THE-PAINTED-STORY.html?soid=1101338710841&aid=ZVW-Hl41LZw

Art Healer Brian Brogan 02/26 by To Inspire | Blog Talk Radio

Art Healer Brian Brogan 02/26 by To Inspire | Blog Talk Radio

The Owl Messenger

The Owl Messenger

I drink the inner bark of Pau D Arco

Through the rings of these dreaming trees

I watch the earth in the deep immensity

Scrying the stars for an elders story

I offer corn meal and sage

Deer rib and red clover

To the mother of us all.

I her follow her soul tracks

Over rain pocked ice through saplings

Over logs and bark flakes in the deep

Wintering of my life

Lies the owl foot in my next step

Yellow skin and talons

Lying in ice crystals

The rest of the bird no where

To see the owl messenger

Stops me rushing through my life

Moon returns its light

Through smoke and rattle transforming

Into the elder wings brush thoughts

Ride the drums energy beyond time

And find her there wings still flying

In the medicine of her foot left behind

Wing beats of healing song

To the rhythm of my flight

Artist website with facebook page link

NOMADS PILGRIMAGE

NOMADS PILGRIMAGE

Nomad moon is made for the wolf’s pilgrimage

Walks with my own step in grass song

Creaking trees try teaching me my roots

Verdant water beads hear the whale heart

Beating through this pebble shore

To the planets beginning before blue

Before seed and green before green

Rolling awake I make chalk marks on the road

Far from the sea driftwood body gathering words

I compile my ink note corridors

Charcoal ants and crows whirl

Through the scrawling air

Heart swells light passing through my bones

Stretching mountain shadows away from the cellular fire

Garden snake leaves the white page of my head

She is the minister before the court of clouds

Behind her mask of mud and straw

She reads from the parchment of truth

A torn moth wing a testimony of hatching

An elders Consciousness through the pupils light

A story pulled from the sky to rest on.

Rattling leaves and the stir of ash makes the world

A clear fountain of pure land empty of thoughts

Flowers grow through a mirror of winter mind

Paint brushes the moon over roses beneath snow

Over the troubled bears dream into the hives nectar

I grip the small energetic heart of snake

In the owl hole of shivering silver branches

Wings spread through my hands

In the unseen stream I conjure worlds into form

Healing grey hues of shadows worn.

Art Healer Brian Brogan 02/26 by To Inspire | Blog Talk Radio

Art Healer Brian Brogan 02/26 by To Inspire | Blog Talk Radio

BRIEF SHADOW SONG

BRIEF SHADOW SONG

In this smoking dream

Unplug yourself from the ghost of life

All the entries that describe you

As the last person down the hall

No one understands

A stranger that travels beneath

The leather sun

All meaning extracted

From the corralled herd

You have become sea glass

Worn polished

But no longer clear

Search for triggers that blaze the soul

The tears runway that almost blind you

Bind you in love

Keep searching for the lucid way

The song words of giants inside you

Grow antlers to collect stars

Keep sharpening the horizon

Scrape the sky for new stories

Try reading the slow curve of the day

The brief shadow songs

The ancestors drum for you

Paint or carve you in their art

In cave walls standing next to you

With medicine they open you up

Driftwood guitars

Releasing your see lanes

Oceanic skirmishes with the self

Storm seeking beauty

Breathe beneath the sea

In the calm wilds of third eye silence

Swirling wolf hairs in the eddies

Scribing the earth for you

In river to sea words

Now read the parts of you

You thought were gone

The ones that fell out of this world

And reunite in this other you become

Something you cannot teach touch express

Its how the bear’s dream in hibernation

Passes through the earth

In ritual energy

Scales of bone

Sound of planet

Until you disappear at the edge

Of a chanting memory

Presences pass through your sky mind

Giant shadow heads of trees

Winged beings land

At your cradle board

Their linear notes season your heart

“You’re called to see this so you will

Be what will help awaken earth’s people

Many will recognize you as one of their own

For others you’re a poem that drifts out of reach

Unable to fix linear meaning to the honey hive

Of your pollinated worlds”

PROCLAMATION OF EXCAVATION

Proclamation of Excavation

By the long moon of the crows

My hands feathers help give the wind a ride

Emptying my many selves

Into one shining flock

Place where we all begin

Late in life - able to see the vastness

This cloud truth of our nature

Dissolving into itself

I put the wafer of the moon

Under my tongue – diamond stillness

I have died here many times before

In this space of power

After the old shape gives way

My white hair fall’s a dream death

Leaving the body sheath behind

I spiral into the ancient gathering

Piercing bone whistle

Through the fevered night

Drums held up for the wind

To play the life song

Of my inner village

Skeletal change humming

Past the invisible cage

See the cocooned mind

Built things up over the years

Now falls away

In tender resolution

For the higher self

What ever we learn comes after

The contradictions of hungry brain

Tethered bird – in a skull of sighs

Reborn between blades

Of whirling thought

Purple wings pass through me

Vacuuming the dust

From my eyelids

Stretching my presence

In fragrant visions

Traffic of stars inside

Glittering pieces of the world

In tender exaltation

This book of wind reads

All worlds inside me

Close to everything now - even this drifting poem

Along the colors of my body

A proclamation of my excavation

Taking the suns glint

In wordless knowing

Artist Statement

My work is rendered in an energetically charged process.  These visionary or shamanic painted stories redress our world and worlds beyond in a communal reciprocity.  Much of my imagery is dreamlike, and comes to me in dreams, visions, and other liminal states of consciousness where the material world meets the spirit world. I am attracted to dreamlike places where tropes merge, meanings shift, and past, present, and future fuse. At these junctures space can become time, and time can turn into space.

Form, structure, color, and other aspects of visual expression both define and defy meaning simultaneously. Work created from and inspired by these states of consciousness often evokes an embodied and participatory response in the viewer. The viewer finishes the story in their head and heart, becoming a part of the work, just as the work becomes a part of the viewer.

AXIS MUNDI

Biography

Brian Brogan was born in 1958 in Brooklyn, NY.  He lived on the Massachusetts north shore for many years.  With great resonance to the spirit of nature he spent much of his time in the woods, mountains and beaches of New England.  Creative, adventurous and a little spirited, he left for the service at the age of 18 years for travel and adventure.  He has lived and traveled around the world for more than 20 years and in more than 20 countries. While on a ship for 2 years he focused on writing and published The Hailing Light of Bees, a book of surreal poems.  He has co-hosted a written literature venue on-line, and writes pieces on art and spirit via his blog and artist face book page.   Spending 5 years in the Far East, his interest developed in the quiet of eastern philosophy.  He disciplined himself to Qi Gong mastery and teachings, and became a Feng Shui consultant and teacher.  Writing for a year at a Buddhist temple, his work took on the form of comic strips for an International Buddhist magazine, done in collaboration with a Chinese art professor and colleague whom he studied  Qi Gong and helped in museum performance/installation art (Buddhist Sand Painting.) Brian Brogan has a great affinity for indigenous/aboriginal peoples and Native Americans, spending time with their teachings.  All of this has greatly influenced his painted stories including his shamanic work.  His painted visions come from the depths and heights of spiritual experience.  The passage from poetry to painted stories was a fluid transition, from one dream world to another.  For Brian Brogan dreams are real.

SOLARIUM OF HEART TALK

I watch the prophesized shipwreck
In the onyx of my ring

Curio seekers scour the earth for her
For the vanishing language
Of untroubled hours

I resurrect the lady leaning against sea and sky
Trapped holy wings in being too human

I find her shoulder sewn
Attached to the swell of wave
Curling back
To the polished bone

This day you find out who you are
In our solarium of heart talk
I pick up ghost pieces of her shine
White foam of her mouth crashes
Along my shore where she’ll always reside

A reckless angel who thinks
“I had my wings folded in”
“Forgot who I was”

Gather these connections
Grow to listen like a plant in the rain
Place flowers in each other
Filling the forest bottom
Of your troubled hearts

Groom the aching painted flower
To be more than arguments with God

Crows in dying light
Where is the wilder influence

Burrow down next to me and listen
Leaves blow inside this perishing body
The elder is lodged in the heart

Wisdoms demand to hold to a child like dust
Knowing the fires magnetism until ash

Wait like a garden of wind
Bring yourself anything to grow
Whatever awakes the sleeping Goddess

My songs to you
Will scatter like ponies in the rain
One will stop by the high leak
Embodied in loves water

For where we drink
Holy fish fly
From where we were
Once without meaning
We feel the rise
Bones splitting into feathers
Amends to the fodder of paradise.