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

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