Wednesday, March 27, 2013

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.



Friday, March 22, 2013

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


Friday, March 01, 2013