Drawings by Brian McHenry
I have a favourite road.
There is a moment in the film version of Gavin Maxwell’s Ring of Bright Water when the main character, Graham, gets off the MacBraynes’ bus and for the first time looks across the Firth of Lorne towards Mull in the distance.
Ben Buie, Sgùrr Dearg, Dùn da Ghaoithe are all there in front of him, each a distant grace note to something that isn’t there anymore. Of course the movie takes vast liberties with both the book and indeed the story of Gavin Maxwell himself but somehow for me, with that scene, it all gets forgotten.
And so I watch the grass as it gets moved by the wind
and the sound of it
And I think of us there in Fishnish all those years later
The sweetness of that sound on Aird a’Mhorain.
Traigh Iar
and I think of those landscapes now that we’re not there,
the spaces where we used to be.
Your presence as it shifts into abstraction
and distant thought now
the space between you and me and the lines that I draw.
. . .
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Brian McHenry is an artist and illustrator whose work has appeared in various publications — including The New Yorker — and featured on record covers, books, and even the odd beer can. He currently lives on the north-east coast of Ireland with his two children. His recent combines elements of portraiture, symbolism, and abstraction to explore the physical and emotional landscape of remembering.
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 