A.L.S.O.

SPIRITUALITY*

I was once an evangelical. It has no appeal anymore and does not make any sense. This is a big statement for me but not for anyone else I suspect. But as the second half of my life shortens the imperative is to let it and be in the mystical cloud of unknowing.But the elitism of evangelicalism and its sheep [ish] followers leminglike seem scattered and circular in weird arguments of desparate historical justifcation. It is a terror to realise the train has left and like John Cleese in “Clockwise” there is a whole life spent trying to justify why you are trying to convince yourself that you must get to that one moment of affirmation even if the train has left.

Peter Breen

KISSING FISH [ FB 07/09/2026]

“80% of Evangelicals — allegedly “incredibly faithful” people — voted for Trump in 2024. And incredibly 72% of them still support him.You told me that following Christ meant loving my neighbor, protecting the vulnerable, welcoming the stranger, and telling the truth even when it cost me something — and you know what? I believed you,” Tim wrote.

“I just don’t believe that YOU actually believe that. Any of it, actually. Because somewhere along the way — and I don’t think it was as recent as you want me to think — you traded every single one of those principles for power. And now here we are, and you are, without exaggeration, on the wrong side of everything.”

“Let’s not forget, dear evangelicals, that you held up a man who bragged about assaulting women, who paid off a porn star to stay quiet about his affair with her, who has never once in his life demonstrated the fruit of the spirit, and you called him God’s anointed anyway.”

“Have you gone mad? Or is this who you’ve always been?”

*This post should have been up before today’s follow up on evangelicalism. It was a response in the moment to the Kissing Fish quote.

A.L.S.O.

SPIRITUALITY

In owning my abandonment of the evangelicalism’s enclave – “convertive piety*” – I also own the long road to the opening of that gate onto a new path. And at that gate are the voices of my present and past mentors, friends and critics. Some are not even interested I suppose and others know their own adjustments to constructs in the second half of their lives. Some feel the need to preach louder. At a recent funeral where an old friend was remembered it featured his sermon to be read for his children in true hard core fundamentalist evangelical style. “If only you believed I will see you in heaven” was the clear uncomfortable and forgettable message. He would be at the gate. Some who are not with me on the path, some who I would suggest are classic fundamentalist evangelicals are not enemies but remain kind and generous when we meet. In these days I do wonder at how we will all be as the power of the holding of constucts without escape hatches grows so oppressively. It seems a dullness, deafness and blindness has millions at the edge of despair without awareness.

Untitled drawing – Journal entry, 2019 [ Peter Breen]

One of the primary means I continue to use through the gate on the new winding foggy path is silence, while as Beckett says in the above quote – we who rush in slippers to silence need to consider the kind of silence we are keeping. We cannot be silent on Palestine, domestic violence, climate change. My primary silence practices that hold the smaller disciplines of meditation, mindfulness and gratitude are walking, mark making and over the past 14 years, a curated installation, “White Silence.” Some books generate a silence in a dive into imagined worlds – lately it has been British Mythologist Dr Martin Shaw’s books and the online print copies of Emergence Magazine. Foundational reading favourite on this unfolding path is the late Anglican Bishop Bruce Wilson’s 1998 “Reasons of the Heart.” Epiphany is what it means to be human, he posits.

Performance piece: Jugglers Art Space, Fortitude Valley, 2017. “Drawn to Silence: Against the flow of my constructred self.”

Performance piece: Jugglers Art Space, 2014. “White Silence” The Shed, Hamilton Northshore, Brisbane.

*”Convertive piety” is the term used in Stanley Grenz’s 2000 book [ Baker Academic] Renewing the Centre – Evangelical Theology in a post theological era to describe or sumarise the essence of evangelical theology.

A.L.S.O. ART

“Assembling” poetry is how I see mark making. It is there to be read if you like – a story with a visual invitation and appeal. I like it or I don’t like it. It grabs me or tells me nothing even after reading it from every angle. Surely it’s more than “nice”( what is a story if it’s just “nice”?) The story returns back pestering my imagination. When has it arrived?

Jeffrey Smart famously kept adding bits to his works at exhibition openings. Story, imagination trigger, first marks, reworking, scrapping, giving up, flow arrives, work,work,work, more than decoration a story paragraph or chapter of mine for me and maybe for you.

Where are the spaces between? Start there. Walk away. Come back. Sit for a bit. Start again. Let it sit. Framed. I sort of get it, she says but don’t hang it over the bed head.

ACTIVITY:

Choose one of these below and see if you can write a short response, or draw a response around it’s essence / aesthetic impact.

“Swamp Grasses, Moreton Bay” Lino Cut on Japanese Paper, $220.

Pencil on paper

Part of an art book exchange project in Denmark, 2026. Theme: Friends. Collage, guache, ink, found paper on paper.

“What Remains” Charcoal, pencil, red pencil, gauche, ink on paper. $770 Framed

“Who cares?”. Charcoal, red pencial, ink on paper. [ SOLD]

“St Kilda” Water colour, guache on paper. $220

A.L.S.O. Love

I’m thinking today of fathers, grandfathers, stepfathers.

My father gone at 53( Cancer) –

A really good man.

My two grandfathers –

I didn’t know them.

Grandfather Breen – Olinda/Campberwell

( Cancer) at about 57

Grandfather May ( Goulburn/Canada/ New York/Sydney/Melbourne) a man with multiple missions, bad choices, over inflated self belief and a blind morality badly affecting his family who with Irish DNA determination far from floundering became remarkable.

My three sons as fathers.

Now I try to call them to get in first and wish them a happy Father’s Day. I love them dearly. ( The spaces between are not for publication! Life to be mildly understood as circular is poetry, music, improvisation and mark making – and love as an endless active foundation)

Ross Staines – my stepfather in my experience of him always good, loved by our children and us and his 3 daughters. A second marriage for him and my mother.

REMEMBERING

Beyond the days of nappy change

Early school starts

Football sidelines

We walk the edges of their lives now

Disappearing slowly while

Loving painfully, joyfully, frustratingly

Like ours departed

Still live on in the mist.

Clouds of knowing

Signs of love and loving

Holding memories

Now buried to return again

Sometimes with regret

Sometimes with wonder that anything has so wonderfully evolved.

Values passed in lives well lived

Mistaken paradigms of

One percentage iron clad determination

Are slow to heal or heal from fester.

But maybe yes grace lives in silence

In steps or bridges of a human reach

Uncalled or called

Who knows just how to be.

And so with gratitude this day affords

A self reflection.

Taking in the small and shaking love

That in moments of grey mist or dark

Confirms

We

And they

Are

In the end

Somehow

Bound in love

And tethered

Like this.

Peter Breen.

Stewart Breen with his eldest son, Peter Breen Circa 1954, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria .

A.L.S.O. Art

If you’ve been following this blog for a while you will know about this social enterprise here in Brisbane.The Stairwell Project started in 2015 at the Royal Brsibane and Women’s Hospital when I was working in Medical Imaging and taking a walk up the stairwell in my lunch break. I realised that the acoustics lent themslves so obviously to music and when we trialled a group performing an achpella Bach piece we knew. The project grew to where it is today where, in our 11th year we have 5 professional musicians funded by Queensland Health’s Cancer Care Services Trust Fund peforming for 10 hours per week across cancer wards, foyers and walkways. Out work has had two research papers published, with one taken up by Arts & Health An International Journal for Research, Policy and Practice  [This paper is available. Please contact me for the PDF copy]

Ian Ahles , Brisbane guitarist and former member of The Stairwell Project in the early days of our program. Ian is a graduate and post graduate Masters of Music musician from the Queensland Conservatorium of Music.

But where we began, in the stairwell and in the foyer spaces of the geneal hospital spaces does not fall under those Cancer Care Services funding guidelines. So we have begun another crowd funding fund raiser. We have however, hit a wall and after 6 weeks with two outstanding musicians performing in the stairwell, we have run out of money. Last week was their last performance in the stairwell for now.

Dr Michael Knopf – Composer, guitarist performing last week the Day Treatment ward, RBWH.

We are looking for generous sponsors and donors to fiund 30 weeks of 4 hours/week in the general hospital foyer and stairwell. We need $5000 to restart this. Please consider making a generous donation with information provided via the QR Code below.

Many thanks in anticipation.

Please contact me for further information.

pbreen22@outlook.com

Peter Breen MA, BTh, ARMIT.

Founder, Curator in assocation wtih Topology Music

Art Love Spirituality Oneness

ALSO

I sat up last night and watched the funeral of Glen Hansard live on RTE You Tube. The midnight gong had me turning into a pumpkin so I went to bed having been moved and moved and moved…As they said often in that service…thankyou, thankyou, thankyou.

I never knew this man nor his music. Only of him.

But I felt I knew him and a hundred thousand others said the same.

A short poem in response:

When the good people die

When the good people die

The dead people sing

While more of the living

Live to live.

Let us live to live

Let our spirit

Soar

Let love be our wings

On our weight and more.

When darkness grips

The heart

We’ll laugh

And love by our will

Turns the fear to chaff.

Let us live to live

Let our spirits

Soar

Let love be our wings

On our weight and more.

Peter Breen

RIP Glen Hansard

It is worth a watch somewhere soon. It was a almost reprise of the Sean McGowan funeral where Hansard lifted the spirits and now silenced in death was celebrated with profound grief mixed with his legacy framed by the stunning poem written and read by his distraught wife, Maire Saarista.

The voice of popular music, any music it seems, and visual art, and public murals, maybe not graffiti, has been sucked into the money making machine and to bypass that monster is an invitation to be ground to pulp. But Glen Hansard was a machine with a huge soul and heart, driven by voice, talent, determination and spirit.

The making of art is for the self. It is for the self. Not for the market or the family or the exhibition or the gallerist or the next prize to enter but for the self. That is all. And that is in the world of male ego a massive machine to push back from.

I am in my studio making work for an exhibition where the great bloke who invited me to join another 5 artists pitch was: “Make small work that’s what Brisbane people are buying.” I get it and it forces me to make but the hope in the clear blue sky of hope is that I will sell something. Something. Something that must be good for the eye of the other! That is how it goes.

An old mate from Jugglers days put up a post today that sums this up beautifully. Benny came to Jugglers struggling with his street smarts and addictions but as is often the case, as wtih Glen Hansard, he split the liminal space open:

“This is something

“On my travels today saw an old boy with mnd in a wheelchair with a Bluetooth speaker singing frank Sinatra songs,I said fuck the train and sat down and took a few songs in..didnt need a photo”

Ben Ben “

As Glen Hansard said: Make art! Make art! Make art!!

Can art change the world? Maybe every now and again but it can and does and will change people, the artist, the musician, the comedian, the actor, the composer.

Make art! Make art! Make art!

Peter Breen

ART . Love . Spirituality . Oneness . ALSO

Mark my marks.

Young and old artists will form collectives and make work in hiddenness and joy on infrastructure and rubbish, on good paper and linen on tree stumps and train skins.

Poets with ink and pen reading in the dead of night.

Novels whispered from manuscripts found behind shed doors.

Comedian improv side splitters outside under trees or on tin shed lounges.

Musicians on trains paying interruption fines.

Candlelit Macbeth in desert caves.

Didge echoes in rain forest seclusion.

The dark deep spiritual intelligence of artists

births endless evolutionary miracles.

Artists are gods

untouched by an eternally limited golden calf intelligence.

Peter Breen

“3 Wise Men” Acrylic, guache on canvas. 2007. Artist: Peter Breen

Goomburra Landscape

Limited Edition Stone Lithograph on BFK Rives Paper. Framed $150 + Postage

This print was made during a two week long lithograph workshop at Queensland College of Art Griffith University Campus at South Bank [Brisbane] taught by master printer, Chris Hagen of Greyhand Press.

It was a steep learning curve for me, to say the least as I had only done my own lino cut relief prints at home and dry-point print making at Brisbane Institiute of Art during COVID. As a late comer to print making it gave me a taste for diverse options to chase up and master.

Print making means among many other things that a drawing can be made multiple times at the highest level of production and in fact it was part of the whole idea of the developement of print making – that is, to make art and mark making affordable.

This work is a simple drawing of the outline of landscape at Echo Valley Farm in the Goomburra Valley [Githabul Country]where my son and his wife work at regenerative agriculture.

Peter Breen

Deitrich Bonhoeffer and Donald Trump

Last night I sat down after everyone was in bed and nonchantly started reading a new print edition copy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s famous pre World War 2 book when his execution by the Nazis made him “a saint” – “The Cost of Discipleship.” It was a go to book in the 1970’s for the radical disciplship movement in my little church world where “cheap grace” was almost a mortal sin and the call Bonhoeffer made was “a call to follow Chist was a call to come and die.” I bought my book after the 1970’s in a second hand book shop and it was printed by SCM, a leftist Christian student publishing company. I filled it with underlining, anotations and notes. A friend brought her boy friend around one night for dinner and I loaned him the book – for some reason he was interested. I shouldn’t have let it go as he confessed to losing it! There’s a lesson in that somewhere but maybe it was some kind of wake up. He bought me a replacement, one printed in 2023 by a conservative publishing mob in the USA , Touchstone Press. I decdied to read the new forward by a guy I had never heard of, Eric Metaxas. I had no idea who he was. But after the proverbial Wikipedia search I found that he is indeed a very conservative writer and radio host and a passionate supporter of the US President, Donald Trump!

By a coincidence a Facebook friend posted this today on his page and so our converstaion evolved as per below.

“Metaxas is a deeply unpleasant individual. I would definitely skip the forward and go straight to the text. Notably, the title of the book actually translates as simply: “Discipleship,” though I am unaware of who it was who decided that title was insufficient. Furthermore, Metaxas has, particularly in more recent times, completely distorted Bonhoeffer’s theology and message for the world.”

Thanks for this update and some clarification. The actual application of this is a daily stuggle. I am still recovering from this discovery and my on line search has found that Touchstone Press is a conservative press [ across protestant, catholic and orthodox ] and was once part of Simon and Schuster. My old copy of this book was lost by someone I loaned it to sadly as it was highlighted and had my anotations in it and was the copy printed by SCM.

Ah, that is a shame…His “Letters from Prison” – a collection of letters written to people while imprisoned – probably better represents his theology, at least as it developed towards the end if his life. “

The struggle to be as Bonhoeffer calls is a struggle. The reminder of the path to tread “to come and die” is a bit dark in the light of, say, Oscar Romero or Bobby Sands. Or even Jesus! There are a host of folks across religious strains and divides who say, the death of the self/selves is the path to life and liberation. That the Puritans didn’t know how best to know how to know if they were Christians except convertive piety, devotions and church attendance is indicative. And influential. And leads to such people as Metaxas writing fowards in books about being one who throws out “cheap grace” while espousing the wonder of the current president of the USA.

But who am I, to come and die,

to live a life for others?

Who am I to attempt to be

a signpost for the living?

The way of living

in the land of plenty

is poverty and death.

But then it seems

as if it is

impossible to find the door.

The only snare are weights and measures,

countless hoards that block the way.

The way is slim, slim and slimmer still

but not in monastries and stripes.

The way is solidarity,

incarnation

inconsequential endless love

and nothing more.

If only it was possible to be

while

blinded by the light

and a dark moon’s shadow.

Peter Breen

Recent work for inclusion in DOA Exhibition on June 13, 2026 at BLOWEHAIR & ART SPACE, Hamilton, Brisbane.

This work was birthed out of time spent with one of my grandchildren in the salt water swamp marshes close to where he had been living on Moreton Bay.

The area was along the road approach to his house. This kind of area, grasses and low marsh trees affected by tidal surges has always had romantic appeal for me. When the tide is high the grasses are in pools, some on higher islands of sandy soil and rocks. The grass is not spikey but has a similar architectural appearance to mondo grass. It is a tubular clumply grass with a striated varigated appearance. The area was in patches stretching along a salt water creek which led out to the bay and long tidal changes.

Some of my drawings and prints, maybe all of them, arrive as conceptual images in my imagination from moments in my living and being. A suggestion, music, another artist’s work or a movie or in this instance, the beauty and impact of the area not to mention the demands of my grandson as we plodded along looking for lizards and frogs.

Here is the first impression of the image in my mind and a couple of quick smart phone images [since deleted] – graphite on paper. I followed this up with the first lino cuts and artist proof prints on Japanese Paper from Daiso – the best and most affordable A4 print paper I have found and that can be used with or without an etching press.

Artist Proof Print using Gamblin black water based ink on Japanese Paper.

I used a blue oil based Japanese Sakura Ink on Japanese Daiso paper for the final run after I had made new marks on the lino. As I don’t own an etching press I made all of the print runs easily with my hand and baren.

There will be two of the blue ink prints framed and available from June 13 at BLOWEHAIR & ART GALLERY. I’d love to see you there. Further promottional information is available on my socials – Instagram in particular.

Peter Breen [ Peteski]

Self Love and Compassion

Collage, gauche on paper, A4. Artist: Peter Breen. Part of the series “I want to tell you” – Body and Soul Berlin Artist Magazine #45, 2025. Prints available.

Use the below self-compassion affirmations to replace self-criticism or remind yourself to be kind to yourself:  Changing is never simple but it’s easier if I stop being hard on myself. My mistakes just show that I’m growing and learning. It’s okay to make mistakes and forgive myself. I am free to let go of others’ judgments. It’s safe for me to show kindness to myself. I deserve compassion, tenderness, and empathy from myself. I release myself with forgiveness from today and move forward with self-love to tomorrow. Every day is a new opportunity. I won’t let self-doubt or judgment hold me back from the future. I forgive myself and accept my flaws because nobody is perfect. I’m not the first person to have felt this way, and I won’t be the last, but I’m growing.

READ MORE

Group Exhibition DOA at BLOW HAIR & GALLERY, Hamilton North Shore, Brisbane, June 13, 2026

If you are intereted in any of these works and cannot attend the exhibtion in Brisbane, please email me at pbreen@bigpond.net.au

Swamp Grasses Moreton Bay Lino Cut Relief Print on Japanese Paper Ed 5 2025

Framed $95 x 2

Goomburra Landfall Lithograph on Hahnamule Paper 2022

Framed $95 x 2

All the bees are [not] dying Ink, graphite, gauche on water colour paper [ 2023]

Framed $95 x 2

Untitled Water colour, gauche, red pencil, graphite on paper [2026]

Framed $95

Untitled Water Colour, guache, red pencil, graphite on paper [2025]

Framed $95

City Lights a Mile High Chacoal on Arches Paper 84 x 60 cm ref Melbourne based musician composer Stuart Greenbaum’s composition of the same name. [2024]

Framed $495

Out of the Office Charcoal, guache, collage on Arches paper [2024]

Framed $375

Dawn Chorus

First – this is a sunset photo I took last evening as I ventured out on my daily walk and so it is not a sunrise. The mysterious folding back of used rain clouds which by this morning had vacuumed the sky clean was worthy of a photo. At around 6am this morning in Brisbane the sky was crystal clear as the orange opening transitions let the sun evenentually make its extroverted presence felt on a crisp autumn morning. Maybe the humidity has gone for a bit.

As I write, the radio and more news is off and I am listening to William Basinski’s September 23rd recorded initially in September 1982. It is just the right pace and sense for this writing about what always is a slow paced event.

I was up at 5am today, not my usual time but after watching Patrick Shen’s “The Dawn Chorus” on Vimeo last night – a reasonably regular habit of mine – I decided to follow suit and just stand in the kitchen and then sit on the back deck and immerse myself in the unfolding Brisbane dawn chorus. No smart phone or photos. just being and watching or as my regen farmer son suggests: I immersed myself in the experience of sunrise as a patient, attentive observer.

Here’s my edited quickly written journal entry after “the sun” had arrived and lit up the room:

This morning the trains began as usual around 4.00 or 4.30. I can’t read my luminous watch face well without light or glasses. I couldn’t get back to sleep so at 5 I got out of bed determined to sit and wait for the dawn chorus – no phone, no lights but with a cup of Irish breakfast tea. I stood in the kitchen and watched. The dark was still. There was a breeze in the trees that slowed and stopped and all is still now at 6.30. Shapes of trees and the light in the street across from us. Always there. As orange began to leak into the sky an orange matching hi-vis shirt and internal light both made their silent appearance across the road. Plumber neighbour Shane having breakfast. He roared off in his ute right on 6 as usual.

The sun is now pouring into the kitchen through the trees, unapologetically. The small lights have gone. The small sounds are big sounds as the dawn chorus finds her voice. The first dog just as the orange glint flickers. Road sound cars picked up volume from around 6 when Shane left. [ Brisbane is the earliest rising city in the world I am told].

A fitness runner, probably in his mid 30’s, jogged by in the half light with no possiblity of tripping, falling or being hit by a car or bike. At least less possible than for me after the close call with a flying push bike in the fading day on my walk near the park last night. Half a metre – I just saw him, he just realised I was about to turn off the footpath on to the walk bridge. Why bike riders are so fast on the footpath is a puzzle. I had a light-coloured jacket on – maybe that helped a bit.

The golden orange fountain keeps creeping up behind the trees in the narrow north eastern horizon. The sun is pouring in now. Birds are well and truely singing. The first to fly by was a fruit bat/flying fox about an hour ago. Then as light picked up speed I saw the emigration from the gums and pines. An ibis circled and left for a better view and vantage point. One or two crows cawed and had a committee meeting across the space then decided to wind the meeting back a bit. A murder of crows reminded me of committee meetings that felt murderous! Plane lights in the distance over Brisbane Airport. One in the grey monument coloured sky then a few more around 6. A loud helicopter low over the house heading south east – a hospital emergency transfer or some other.

The stillnes of moments as light arrives with warm promises of the end of weeks of rain.

It is still, still.

Dawn has arrived and we are still here. Slower but still here. The world in Brisbane is rushing awake and racing on to get ahead while tomorrow the sun will rise again as the end of a humid hot autumn leads into at least a few days of winter cool. Climate change only affects the world below the stratosphere while the sun laughs and warms with light and beauty, casting dancing shadows, rocking crows’ nests and starting the chlorophyll photosynthesis cycles in leaves, spinach and grass trees. Gratefully blessed.

Peter Breen

ALSO is an acronym from a weird dream I had and now use as a loose fitting theme for my blog posts.

Exhibition Group Show – Hamilton Foreshore [Brisbane] Opening night June 13

Show title: DOA

On June 13 I will be joining a group of artists most of whom have exhibited at and certainly visited Jugglers in the time we were in the Valley and this will be a great opportunity to rekindle old connections and friendships.

The show will be in a hair dresser’s salon where the owner is very passionate about art as well as hair.

BLOWHAIR/ARTSPACE – ART GALLERY SPACE, HAIR N BEAUTY EXPERTS.

This ticks the boxes I have around my interest in shared public and private spaces for art and business/home.

The following works of mine – and quite few more that I will post up next week – will be part of this show.

All works are for sale.

If you are reading this in Brisbane I’d love to see you there.

If you want to buy before the show let me know.

#1 Out of the office Charcoal, pencil, gauche, collage on Arches paper, A1, Framed: $460

#2 City lights, a mile up Charcoal on Arches paper, A1, Framed : $950

#3 All the bees are [not] dying Ink, gauche on watercolour paper, A4, framed: $225

Peter Breen

pbreen22@outlook.com

A.LS.O.

How well is the world doing? Not too good.

These are the books we read in the 70’s and 80’s.

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.

Living in a World Falling Apart.

When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

I am mostly out of touch with what is current now in the religious world but I have the distinct sense that we can make some survival community sense of this through Pete Seeger’s “Turn Turn Turn” sentiment while depressingly aware that all of these authors would just have to change the dates and all would be the same. The systems, the power and control has not changed for a better world.

Except – there are commuity love lights that flicker on hills all over the world and maybe that is all that we can hope for.

Peter Breen

ART

Ink Jet pigment ink on found paper, gauche, charcoal, ink on paper, pencil on paper

These drawings of mine – except the pencil drawing of the three friends – are part of a series of 25 for an artists magazine in Denmark around a Friends theme. The invitation came from the founder of the Denmark based magazine who saw my drawings in last year’s Body and Soul Berlin Artist Magazine #45 where the theme there was I want to tell you.

Charcoal, gauche, found collage on paper

This opportunity in 2025 came initially via Instagram from a Kyiv/Ukraine artist/designer based in Berlin who is an outstanding internationally known printmaker – lino cut relief print is her expertise area – and who is part of the design team for the Berlin magazine. I have a private Instagram account that I set up during COVID – on_being_isolated and so if nothing else, Instagram has become a portal for my art practice. The June 30 deadline and theme have hints of term papers while keeping me focussed and organised. One of the most important practices for an artist is to keep making marks and these invitations have been a prescription for this for me.

Friendship/friends have featured as a central life dynamic for me. I still chat and visit with a friend that I met in kindergarten in Melbourne over 70 years ago! My wife and children have become best and closest friends while my time in organised religious groups, Medical Imaging and Jugglers/The Stairwell Project have given me a range of remarkable friendships.

When I first read the C S Lewis quote I decided to include it in the series as a provocation while holding that friendship, art and philosophy are life lines for me. I would be “lost” without them. The ink stick figure gauche pieces find their origins in loneliness and that the spaces between friendship and “the other” are real. Not as an agenda for bridging necessarily but as a reality of modern life where individualism and isolation have serious impacts on community and an individual’s experience of living and being.

The “Friends Zone” is a drawing from the Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker where a “stalker” leads two friends to a zone where all desires can be realised. The drawing taken from a film still evoked for me experiences I have had of complete stuckness in a friendship where the next step, word, piece of advice or decision were nowhere to be found.

Friendship can be “strong as death” – it is certainly a version of love – and it can be stuck. It can be the most wonderful shared experience over years with never a moment of strong argument or a short lived geographical or institutional experience.

Friends and friendship is an interesting theme to represent with marks.

Peter Breen

LOVE

“Real love, the only kind genuinely worthy of the name, is a kind of dialectical overcoming. It only becomes possible at the point where one comes to understand the full reality of one’s beloved, which necessarily, means encountering even those qualities one finds infuriating, loathsome, or detestable.

For surely, if you know enough about anyone, you will find something in them that you hate. But it’s only when one encounters that, and decides nonetheless to love them anyway, that we can talk of love as an active, redemptive, and powerful force.

Real love can only be love if it conquerors hatred, but not by annihilating but by containing and transcending it, and not just once, but forever.”

– David Graeber

I have pinned this at the top of my Facebook Page to remind me of Graeber’s words and the deeper meaning – to be a love activist. In my living and being. It is easy to preach if one is a teller, a preacher, a teacher – or a con artist. But to choose first the battle of “dialectical overcoming” is not for the faint hearted or as good spoken word.

In C.S.Lewis’s “The Four Loves” he suggests that when eros, philia or storge fail – and they will – that agape will need to be the main love word for a life in a relationship/marriage. And as a mentor of mine said to me once “I can only really love one person well Peter and that is my wife.” I am not sure he was right but in Graeber’s words, I get it. Agape is, I sugggest, the kind of love that best describes Graeger’s battle. It’s then that “…we can talk of love as an active, redemptive, and powerful force.”

There’s a bucket load to talk about that this small paragraph from David Graeber unlocks and it is a worthy few words to chew over.

Peter Breen

David Graeber

davidgraeber.institute

Peter Breen

This Friday’s art post

Experiments with water colour, Japanese ink and gauche with brush on A4 paper.

The trigger for these is the garden and botanical specimens around our yard and particularly my studio.

All these works are available to purchase. $25 each unframed + Post.

Feeling Disconnected – and how to Reconnect

Disconnection in a relationship rarely shows up all at once. It’s quieter than a big fight, subtler than a breakup conversation. It feels more like distance than drama. One day you realize you’re sharing space but not really sharing life. And if you’re feeling disconnected, here’s the important thing to know upfront: this isn’t about assigning fault. Disconnection isn’t a courtroom. It’s a signal. The most productive question isn’t “Who’s responsible for this?” It’s “What can I do from here?”   Emotional disconnection doesn’t always mean you don’t love each other. Often, it shows up in small, everyday ways: Conversations stay practical but lack depth.You feel lonely even when you’re together.Affection feels routine, forced, or absent.You stop sharing your inner world—thoughts, fears, excitement.You avoid bringing things up because it feels easier not to.Time together feels more like coexistence than connection.Disconnection often grows out of normal life pressures rather than intentional neglect. Stress, work, parenting, unresolved resentment, exhaustion or emotional self-protection can all quietly widen the gap. Sometimes we disconnect because: We don’t feel understood and stop trying.We’re afraid conflict will make things worse.We assume our partner “should already know”We prioritize peace over honesty  How to Reconnect Connection is built through behaviour, not verdicts. You don’t need your partner to change first to begin shifting the dynamic. 1. Start With Your Own Presence Ask yourself honestly: Am I emotionally available, or just physically present?Do I listen to understand—or to respond?When we talk, am I really there?Connection begins with attention. Putting your phone down, making eye contact, slowing your responses—these small acts signal safety and care. 2. Share From Vulnerability, Not Accusation There’s a big difference between: “You never open up anymore.”“I miss feeling close to you.”One invites defensiveness. The other invites connection. Speak from your experience. Use “I” statements. Share longing instead of criticism. Vulnerability softens where blame hardens. 3. Get Curious Again Disconnection often grows when curiosity fades. You stop asking questions because you think you already know the answers. Try reopening that door: “What’s been weighing on you lately?”“What’s something you’ve been thinking about but haven’t said?”“How are you really doing?”Curiosity says, You still matter to me. 4. Create Intentional Moments of Connection Connection doesn’t magically appear when life is busy—you have to make room for it. That might look like: A daily check-in without distractionsA weekly walk or coffee dateGoing to bed at the same time to talk.Doing something new togetherIt’s not about grand gestures. It’s about consistency. 5. Address Resentment Gently and Early Unspoken resentment is one of the fastest paths to disconnection. If something is bothering you, bring it up before it hardens. Focus on impact, not character: “When this happens, I feel…”“What I need is…”Repair builds trust. Silence erodes it. 6. Regulate Yourself First If you’re emotionally flooded—angry, shut down, overwhelmed—it’s hard to connect. Take responsibility for calming your nervous system before trying to fix the relationship. Breathing, journaling, movement, or taking a pause can help you come back grounded instead of reactive. Staying Connected Over Time Connection isn’t something you achieve once. It’s something you practice. Staying connected means: Choosing honesty over comfortTurning toward instead of away.Repairing quickly when you miss each other.Remembering that closeness is built, not assumedYou won’t always feel deeply connected—and that’s okay. What matters is noticing the distance and responding with care rather than withdrawal.

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ART

I am planning to to post various mark making ART projects here each Friday afternoon while continuing to post essays on middayWednesday.

I am keen to share these works and invite comments and even collector interest.

Graphite, ink and gauche on 2016 Diary ( NFS)

Peter Breen