“I WANT TO TELL YOU”
These 25 works* are my mark making response to I want to tell you, the theme for the second bi-annual Body and Soul Magazine #45 , Berlin for 2025. The invitation to join this project came out of the blue via my Instagram account on_being_isolated and the artist Olesya Dzhurayeva [and publisher Hendrik Liersch] a remarkable lino cut/relief artist and collaborating designer of the magazine. The brief is to create a body of work – 25 original signed A4 pages around the given theme with a 3 cm left side border. Random selected pages from the approximate 20 invited artists will be bound into 25 page books by the publisher of Body and Soul Magazine Berlin and one of these will become each artist’s surprise gift in exchange. Some works and books will be kept to offset the publishers costs. The magazine was founded by the late Schoko Casana Rosso in 2005 while Hendrik Liersch picked up the project as publisher and has continued it into 45 editions. It is an inspiring mark making and international community project that I am excioted to be a part of. I’ve been drawn into this – pun intended – working and re-working and adjusting, following heart and hand since early in 2025.
The weight of I want to tell you is more than it would be in a world that only has the right coffee mix and muffin recipe. This body of work became a poem of introspection and despair added to an attempt to take one of the weights/waits of the world in 2025 – climate change and the 2019 Australian bush fires – and put down marks that respond viscerally at least to that elephant in the room.
As with my 2020 All the bees are [not] dying body of work, I hold that life is a constant and emerges against all odds. Resurrection is always possible. Always. When and how is beyond my very limited clarivouyant or exegetical skills and gifts but I am convinced of the reality of life being the being of all, in all and through all. To delcare and fight for this life to be better and healthier and pristine and beautiful is always right while now it seems to be overwhlemingly hopeless.
While ever a bee or a bacteria or a leaf or blackened tree stump carry life then this is what I want to tell you.
Life always will be.
Peter Breen. June 18, 2025.
*Graphite, ink, charcoal, red pencil, guache, water colour, collage, glue, relief print, monotype, found encyclopedia pages, Daiso Japanese calligraphy paper, anko acid free paper [160gsm]
FOR COLLECTORS.
WORKS FOR SALE.
Prints of # 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, 22, 23, 25 will be available after June 30.
Each work will be printed on A4 [ 21 x 29.7cm] gsm Hahnamule photo rag paper. The 3cm left hand book binding space will be removed and each work will have an approx 2-5 mm border around the whole perimeter. [ Prints by Martin Barry at Brisbane Digital Imaging]
$80 each + Post
If you are interested in any of the other non-printed works, I am happy to work up new original duplicates. Prices on application.
Please contact pbreen22@outlook.com
Thankyou in anticipation.
Peteskibreen's Blog 