Gabrielle Brinsmead

Oil on paper

12 by 16.5 inches

The highlight of each week, for me, is Mass on Saturday. Behind the altar stands a wooden lattice that catches light pouring in through stained glass windows. A sea of liquid gold, and when it mingles with songs of praise my heart leaps up, so full and bright, with greater joy than I have ever experienced.

It would be easier to stay in church, not have to deal with the more ordinary and difficult aspects of life. Although I leave, somewhat unwillingly, I am certain that I am not alone, and that Divine Love, so abundantly present during the Mass, climbs on to the Box Hill tram and travels home with me.

Oil on canvas

30 by 30 cms

We drive down to Phillip Island, just for the penguins. In they come, bearing food from the sea, to a rapturous welcome from their young. Sitting there on a windswept wooden bench, in the light of a full-moon, I think of my grandfather and my grandmother, how they loved nature, the sea and in their own way, us.

Next day I ask my father if he ever went to Phillip Island as a boy, to see the penguins, and he said yes, we holidayed there.

I think my grandparents spoke to me that night, put their ghostly arms around me and told me not to worry, that we will all be caught up in the air together one day, not so very long from now.

Oil on canvas

50 by 60 cms

 I had the chance, years ago, after visiting Our Lady in Rome, of seeing Christ’s burial shroud. Instead, I drank coffee at Turin station, recoiling in horror every time I caught sight of my reflection.

In my dream, I’m trying to paint His portrait, while Dr Adler psychoanalyzes me, aided and abetted by my mother. I’m trying so hard, but all I’m doing is making a mess. Blobs of brown, of green. I keep trying to adjust, to fix, but in the end I scrape so much off, that barely any of it is left. All that remains: a blank space. The shroud.

Then I travel way back into the past, to that period when my mother and I were almost inseparably close. I love you, I tell her. I can’t do anything without you.

I enjoy helping her shop in the supermarket, until I lose the brown folder with my work in it. I lose my temper. Our entente, obviously more fragile than it seems, is smashed.

When I wake up, it’s Sunday, the day of our risen Lord. There is light everywhere, flashing and flitting around the kitchen, sliding across the table.

Oil on canvas

30 by 40 cms

As I sweat and sulk my way through menopause, I think about what it means to be fertile for a season: to want to be beautiful, to feel the inexorable tick-tock of the body clock, to preen and self-decorate and fear the scorn and judgment of eligible men. I remember how terrified I was about getting fat, and being left on the shelf.

I think about the person I am becoming on the other side of this madness: harder, less fun, more ambitious, less tolerant. Still terrified about getting fat, although now that is probably more of a practical fear, since growing out of clothes is so unpleasant.

On Sunday night, I have a nightmare about my wedding. I can’t find a dress that fits, and that I like. The only available one is green and black, and, at size 28, I’m pretty sure that it’s too big.

When I wake up, I’m still married, it’s still cold, and I understand why I don’t wear dresses anymore.

Oil on Canvas

40 by 50 centimeters

Having journeyed together for a time, I am now very aware, too aware, that we are traveling in different directions. Valete.

Oil on canvas

40 by 50 centimeters

Many years ago, a country priest baptized me with Holy Water. Joy, so strong that it felt like magic, raced through my body like electricity. A miracle occurred in me, at what felt like the cellular level. Even though I turned my back on it for many years, it was powerful and strong enough to pull me back from a dark and dangerous place.

Now I feel, bearing this in mind, that every time I pick up my pen, my paint brush, every time I step on my yoga mat, every time I say, I love you, I’m being baptized once again by the same Holy Ghost, that same fire.

Oil on canvas

40 by 50 cms

Right now, because he runs a business in Pakistan, my husband is here for one months and then gone.

The kids miss him, his laughter, his kindness, his utter silliness, as well as his readiness to drive them here there and everywhere.

I miss him even more. During the week, cooking and shopping by myself. When things are good, I miss not having someone to celebrate with. When things are tough, I miss his support, his wisdom, his refusal to want anything for me but the absolute best. Food doesn’t taste like much. I have trouble going to bed and sleeping, and when I wake up, I feel tired.

It seems like his month away will never end. But finally he returns, bringing the sun. And paints and brushes, palettes, palette knives and canvases, money, hope and plans for a bright future.

And who, who have been feeling so old and so terribly cold, slowly begin to thaw.

Oil on Canvas

50 by 60 cms

A well of water, springing up without end. Tchaikovsky. My husband’s last weekend in Melbourne, before he retreats to his lucrative wilderness. A court case thrown out. Unimaginable joy, wealth, beauty, and so much love.

Keep me alive while my husband is gone.

Bring him back.

Oil on canvas

108 by 125 cms

I lived overseas for twelve years, and never stopped missing Australia. I started painting in Pakistan, and my first exhibition there was called Karachi via Sydney. I painted flowers that grew both in Pakistan and Australia. I painted the trees and grass and fresh air that I missed so badly. I tried to paint myself back here.

I have barely been back six months, in this country that seems both brand new, as well as like an old friend. On the weekends we travel outside of Melbourne: up into the Dandenongs, down to the Mornington Peninsula and along the Great Ocean Road, encountering the sort of majesty and beauty which I will never take for granted again.

I paint what I see and what I feel: all the colors in the country, all the elements, all the people who call Australia home. I paint her cheerfulness, her playfulness, her generosity. There is also pain and grief in what I paint, lingering scars of a sometimes violent past.

But ultimately, my entry is as big and as bright as possible, because that’s how I feel about my land and her psyche.

Oil on Canvas

40 by 51 cms

Where do the colors come from, and the shapes, and the brilliant music that flows with each stroke? It’s a mystery to many, although not to me.

Oil on canvas

40 by 51 cms

It is windy, rainy and very cold. The dirties are once again piling up, and my bedroom is a mess. My uncle died last night; after hearing the news I had a strange dream about burning the remains of my old horse. There is a leak in my garage and a splinter in my ring finger. And yet here I am, with time and energy to spare, ready to paint.

Oil on Canvas

40 by 51 cms

On the verge of turning fifty-one, and having managed to find ways to protect myself from Melbourne’s biting winter, I pick up my pen and attempt to shape, without any forethought, what it feels like to be me, Gabrielle Brinsmead, at 51. I am loved. I am needed. I have brought two wonderful children into the world. I have made a lot of very silly mistakes, and yet I am so loved.

Oil on canvas

30 by 40 cms

To Saints Catherine and Luke

I dream of a bus in St. Ives,

Then my mother, along with my brother, who

Wish to take a walk.

Something, somewhere, is written in a book.

My daughter still coughs

But the song of the currawong reminds me

To lift up

My cup of hope,

To the Lord, so that He

May fill it.

Come Saint Catherine, be with

My eyes and my hands.

Come, Saint Luke,

Shine through my hands and my heart and

Let me Paint.

Oil on Canvas

40 by 48 inches

After five long weeks, my husband returns from Pakistan. He brings paints, palette knives, canvases and three custom-made canvases, offers to cook for the foreseeable future and collect the kids from school and their various activities. All this means that today, Monday, the significant and magnificent first day of the new week, I have space and time to paint.

I arrive in my studio (basement, actually) with a plan in mind. But light shining through the slats of the garage onto the canvas suggest a simpler (or perhaps more complicated) design.

Blending new paints with old, using new strokes on a canvas I recognize as belonging to a former life, I am infused with joy, energy and excitement. Then I get paint everywhere and spend an hour cleaning up, desperate not to walk paint through my (relatively) pristine townhouse.

Oil on canvas board

11.5 by 16 inches

My life has not been the way I planned for it to be. There have been plenty of disappointments and I have made more mistakes than I honestly care to count. And yet I am certain that I have lived, and continue to live, sheltered by invisible, mighty and supremely loving forces.

Oil on Canvas Board

11.5 by 16 inches