Lake Light, November

LAKE LIGHT, NOVEMBER (Quiet Waters 9)
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2010)

Lake Light, October

LAKE LIGHT, OCTOBER- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, October, 2010



Painted on the boat:
Blue circles, lines, and
Contours to reflect

The journey,
The opening of space
That the prow,
Cutting gently,
Seeks and sublimates

*
The sky was a sea
For birds and remembrance
In high September

So many strange colors:
Pines and maples and oaks and
Hemlocks; the sharp and
Piercing red
Of berries on mountain ash.

He had brought corn and
Salt, a small flask of
Trader’s whiskey;
Flint and bacon grease,
Line, weight, bait….

*
River, you have
Brought me here, he
Said,
Then smiled and shivered.

Stars rose like
everything must

Now October
Shimmered
On the skin of these waters.


-Kevin Macneil Brown

Quiet Waters, Part Three

QUIET WATERS 6- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor and graphite on paper, August 201o

Quiet Waters, Part Two

QUIET WATERS 5, QUIET WATERS 4- paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, 2010

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My work this summer on the Quiet Waters paintings has been accompanied by the composition of this long-form soundscape piece for lap steel and laptop.

I invite you to listen and take a contemplative journey along the shoreline and on the water:

The Quiet Waters Series

QUIET WATERS 2, QUIET WATERS 1-Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, 2010

This summer I'm working on a new series of paintings inspired by the contemplative energies I often find rising within me in at the places where water, sky, and land meet. Here are the first two. Making these images is an active meditation for me; a way to conjure the ineffable connection I feel with these places.

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(For information about purchasing prints and originals, or to enquire about my work and projects, please contact me at liminaleditions@gmail.com, or visit kevinmacneilbrown.wordpress.com )

June Sails, Juniper Island

When I engage with Lake Champlain's waters, sky, and shoreline, I often feel, all at once, both a deep inner calm and a vibrant sense of energy. My intent in this painting was to express these sensations: the wide and deep spaciousness of the lakescape; the movement and energy of light on water, wind in sails.

-KMB

Early Summer, Lake Champlain

EARLY SUMMER, LAKE CHAMPLAIN- painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor and graphite on paper, May, 2010)

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...I’m grateful and awed every time I engage with Lake Champlain; with its ever-changing surface, shores, and depths offering knowledge and mystery alike.
-KMB, from "Power of Place"

You can read the entire short essay at :

http://voicesforthelake.org/items/show/4

From the Cove

(From the Cove, Lake Champlain,

Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, watercolor on paper, 2010 )

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From the Cove, Lake Champlain

My father left
this cove in,
what was it,
1833?

Now I’m here again,
three decades on,

seeing the lake through his eyes:

Water always
in motion;
though also, at times,
becalmed.

He had spoken more than
once of season’s changing,
bringing a rain of
birds across the
sky and on the water.

He had also said to me:
“Look at all
that deep blue lake;
those distant ghost-grey mountains today;
the dark green forest sharp to the sky --
but sweet silver shallows
at home here
at the cove…”

This was the place
he always
struck out from,
every morning,
year after year.

As I write these words
a fish-hawk swoops,
hits the water hard,
rises
with gleam of
catch in talons.

So, something
still here
of my father, then,
meeting my return.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

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Among the many resonances I experience in the presence of Lake Champlain are those that vibrate with a sense of the past. When I finished the painting above in April, I knew there was a story that went with it, but I was not sure exactly what it was. I did have a sense that there was something sort of 19th century about the image.

I returned to the lake shore along Burlington Bay recently for a day of walking, thinking, sketching--experiencing the lake and its horizons as fully as I could. I was riding the bus home when the poem arrived, and I got the first draft down, knowing that I'd found the story to go with the painting.

Across April

LAKE CHAMPLAIN APRIL II, I
Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown,
watercolor on paper, 2010

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A whole day
in one place:

the edge of
red quartzite
cliffs,

and from here
I can watch
the changing weather
coming for miles.


There it is!
A thin bright line,
slow-moving, silver
across the broad lake, the
flint-hard, sky-flecked waves.


-Kevin Macneil Brown
April, 2010

From Oakledge, April

FROM OAKLEDGE - Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,

watercolor on paper, 2010

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April, and darkness falls at Oakledge.

And out across the water of sky, the sky of water, one last
glint of daylight finds the island,
then is taken in to the heart of dark spruce and shadowed pine.

It’s these vibrations and striations
in time and light that
I live for here at the lakeshore.

For instance, right now,
when lost soundings in fathoms return to memory,
and old bridge footings rise again.

As for me, like these ancient red rocks,
I only seem to be still.

And what first arrives as twilight quiet
is soon to come alive

with wing-beat, ripple, wave on shifting stone.

-Kevin Macneil Brown

Spring Passage

SPRING PASSAGE (detail) Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, 2010

Lake Champlain, Early Spring Evening

Lake Champlain, Early Spring Evening (detail)
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown,
acrylic on canvas, 2010

Season's Edge/Winter Light ( Part Two)

Lake Champlain: Winter, Late Afternoon
Painting by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2010

Season's Edge/ Winter Light

SEASON'S EDGE, WATER'S EDGE;

WINTER LIGHT, LAKE CHAMPLAIN (detail)

Paintings by Kevin Macneil Brown, acrylic on canvas, 2010)