Gabrielle Brinsmead

There are twelve months of the year, twelve days of Christmas and twelve hours on the clock. There were twelve apostles of Christ and twelve gods of Olympus. I love both seeing and saying the number twelve: complete and divisible, when it applies to one’s young, it can be the beginning of trouble and also of entirely new beings.

Inception. The first day of the year. Fervent prayers for health and for home. Fat, flesh-colored roses. Lichen, gnarled gum leaves and insistent wind. These joys, while we discuss parties to which we are no longer invited and which we no longer wish to attend. Resolution after resolution, including: to no longer be afraid of the sun, or of being alone, to forgive, and to allow myself the luxury of feeling forgiven. To progress with more joy.

One by one, lights appear from neighboring homes. Rain clears away, leaving a Prussian blue sky streaked with stars. Families prepare to eat the least meal of the day, before going to bed and to sleep. And so do we.

Oil on paper

21 by 30 cms

Finally I decide (better late than never) to examine myself.

Oil on paper

30 by 40 cms

I hide in this body. I hide in food. I hide in glory, and self-abnegation. I hide in wine, in love and in lust. I hide in children, in bottles and exhaustion and nappies. I hide in dogs and cats. I hide in Pakistan. I hide in books, and the never-ending busyness of universities and courses.

It’s an easy game for you, finding me, overturning my fragile barrows of dreams, and laughing, but kindly.

I try hiding in paint, but the paint speaks, sings: holy, holy, hallelujah.

Brush in hand, I give up. Lord, here I am.

Oil on paper

30 by 40 centimeters

I am what I am, resistant to the process of refinement or domestication. Forever a diamond in the rough. It turns out, I deeply identify with rough. Know it, love, understand it.

Oil on paper

30 by 40 cms

I saw an angel standing

In the sun, and she said

Love is in the air, and marriage, joy and rejoicing (after shipwrecks

Litter the coast), and

 roses and magic beans

Planted by the great, good God: all shining.

I

Am a clean, bright, light, white

Spirit who listens and speaks and lustily sings:

King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, forever

And ever, and forever amen.

Oil on paper

12 by 16.5 inches

Oil on paper

12 by 30 centimeters

However highly you think of yourself, you are more magical and magnificent by far. You have hands and feet and entrails and a face and a heart; you can laugh and cry and hope, fear, destroy and create. You are an entire planet, guarded by angels and guided by stars.

Oil on paper

8 by 12 inches

Wherever love and memory lingers, so also do thorns and prickles.

Oil on paper

21 by 30 centimeters

A sharp, wild wind is tearing through my tiny garden, tossing around twigs, leaves and dirt, and howling through a tiny crack in my patio door. It’s an ill wind that blows nowhere, but what will this one bring for us? My hopes and prayers are for health, wealth, new friends and joy.

Oil on paper

12 by 16.5 inches

Not one of my copies is a perfect representation. The lilies I paint are not as beautiful as the ones I buy from the fruit shop. The yoga postures I do are not as good as the ones I see on Instagram. My abstracts are not as exciting as the feeling that inspires them. But for me, the real miracle is the improvement that comes from constantly creating imperfect copies.

And there is something childlike, fresh and optimistic about each imperfect copy.

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.