Devil $125 (£63)

11" x 11"

“Transsexual by Choice" $125 (£63)

“Transsexual by Choice, and also by Bengal Quince/Goldfinger Banana Tree” (glows in the dark)

10" x 10"

Phil Feeds the Goats (Bringing in the Stars) $500 (£250)

16" x 20", framed, under glass.

Women Signs 1991 $125 (£63)

8.5" x 11", framed under glass.

1991 Self-Portrait $125 (£63)

8.5" x 11", unframed, acrylics, oils & pen on cardboard.

Hybrid Vigour, Alaska - ALL SOLD!

“Licking the Alaska State Highway: Transvestite, Autumn” The HYBRID VIGOUR Series, Pen & Ink and Acrylics on Paper. 8½" x 11", This painting is part of a seasonal set (Alaskan Hybrid Vigour – Summer, Spring, Winter, Autumn) within a larger series – HYBRID VIGOUR.

“Someone Has Left Australopithecus Boisei Behind in the Woods: Nutcracker Man, Winter"

“Captain Michael Healy, of Mixed Race Heritage, Observes with Pleasure the Melting Ice on Some Future Alaskan Beach Year 2005: 1891 Polar Explorer, Spring”

“Summer Bleeding It Happened So Fast: Jesus, Phoenix, Summer”,

“Dolly the Electric Sheep (Ogmore by Sea)” $200 (£100)

“Dolly the Electric Sheep (Ogmore by Sea)” Watercolours, Acrylics, Coloured Glue, Fabric, Pen & Ink on Posterboard. 8½" x 12"

The first incarnation: I was 13 and had just returned from a short trip to Wales when my parents took my brother and I on a month-long trip to Europe. We ran for our Heathrow plane back to Anchorage; we missed it, and so we went to Wales during the three-day wait for the next Alaskan-bound flight (British Airways still had direct flights to Alaska in those days; Prince William was born when we were mid-air and they offered free champagne to all legal adults). I was very impressed by Welsh Nationalism and by Ogmore-by-Sea in particular, where my brother and I went exploring in caves and ruins and found something that looked like a dragon's egg. The site was haunted by a Blue Lady, a type of ghost. I painted this on my return in commemoration for some local children's painting group. I specifically remember trying to put a real silver lining in the cloud. Then I redid the painting during a nightmarish trip down the Alcan highway with my best friend, the second worst month of my life so far. My boyfriend and I had split, badly; my friend and I were squabbling, badly; I was coughing up blood from a cat allergy, badly. Throughout this trip I drew whirly designs in coloured ink on my old painting. Sometimes when I look at my paintings, I can remember every emotion I felt at the time that I sketched, and this is one of them. As I occasionally paint as a method of sorting through my thoughts and opinions, my associations with my paintings are not always happy and often ambivalent. I added a highly decorated frame (with little black sheep saying "one for my master, one for my dame") in 1997 and renamed this Dolly the Electric Sheep to be topical (a comment on the appropriation of bodies human and animal for scientific research), but I later removed the frame and kept the name. The frame was hideous yellow-green and I burnt it in a bonfire one year.

“Sheela-na-gig” $600 (£300)

“Sheela-na-gig” The BITCH Series Mixed Media on Cardboard. 30" x 48" Framed under glass.

Mouth. Teeth. Eye. Dream of an infected eye swarming with yellow globules that I couldn't pick off like that old Plath poem. 14th-century carvings on ancient Celtic churches/monuments, which showed female gargoyles holding open their genitalia. Unclear whether these were an admonition against feminine lust or a show of brazen grrl power. Far more likely to be the former. Sheila is a hell of a bitch.

“Harpy Flies Through the Real Cosmo(s)” - SOLD!

26" x 28"

The Enchanted Salmon $125 (£63)

8.5" x 11"

The Exorcism of Anne Boleyn $200 (£100)

“Exorcism of That 3-breasted, 6-fingered Witch Anne Boleyn, The (II)” [juvenilia – of sorts 1987, 1989, 1997 / The BITCH Series, pen & ink and acrylic paint on paper and board 16" x 20" FRAMED

This painting has been many things: first a scene from Moliere's play Tartuffe done as a high school French project for extra-credit because my grades were low that term; then repainted for a Halloween exhibition on exorcism at the University of Alaska two and a half years later (for which it wasn't accepted, damn it) as the exorcism of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, who was accused of being a witch and rumoured to have had six fingers on one hand and three nipples. If you look closely here, you can see a second cleavage and that sixth digit. The red fuzz above the characters' heads is magic, as Anne works her own reverse exorcism with a hidden book, bell and candle, and begins to reveal her weapons. Then I moved to Seattle and traded the painting, originally rather large, away to my friend Karen's boyfriend in exchange for a hat I never received. Paul, the friend's boyfriend, a very talented and sweet fantasy milliner, was extremely fond of it for reasons that were always a little cloudy, perhaps it was the male character's elaborate plume-feathered hat. Then Karen and Paul broke up and, hatless, I lost track of Paul as I moved to Europe. All I had left was part of a colour copy I'd once had done. I repainted on the colour copy, with some vague idea of depicting the stereotyping in Disney cartoon feature films – "Disney goes wrong" – but I left most of it as it was and just patched up the faded bits where the colour copy had been torn, and changed the background colour. Its truest incarnation and, I believe, its heart, is its second life as the maligned but still rebellious Anne Boleyn.

Juvenila

1987

1987

1986

1986

1986

1976

The. Big. Film. Is. Driving. Me. Nuts.

Girl on a Stick

(image still from The Wonderful Thing)

In other news, I got this today!


"Hi Kathleen - hope you're well. I've been inspired by GoaS - on the rare occasions I'm in london I've started scribbling my ire in Metro &c. In fact - i've been scribbling "GIRL ON A STICK!" over pictures of vacant, pouting "babes". MAkes me feel better and hope this generates some buzz too - can you get your other London mates to do the same?

Big love

Em x

Serious site: | http://www.uclmail.net/users/e.byrne
Silly site:D http://emmalouise99.blogspot.com"

I couldn't ask for any better tribute. I think Clementine would be proud.

The Date.

I feel strangely numbed to September 11th. Everything my country has done since has been a spit in the face to those who love life, including all those who deplore the murders that occured on September 11th.

The murders of September 11th were wrong.

The resultant two invasions by the U.S. and murdering of 700,000+ Iraqi civilians was and is wrong.

The Patriot Act and tearing apart of the U.S. Consitution was and is wrong.

Extraordinary rendition and Guantanomo Bay detainments were and are wrong.

The horrific events of September 11th marked the start of a terrible period in the history of the U.S. and the rest of the world, indeed.

I want this.

My maternal grandfather, Gerald Desmond, died four years before I was born, but his legacy lived on through his collection of Charles Addams cartoon books that lived in my grandparents' study. All three of my siblings and all ten of my first cousins on that side of the family (and I) spent many Christmas and Thanksgiving hours visiting Grandma and delighting in the pitch-dark humor of Mr. Addams. All fourteen of us grandchildren have a taste in humor that could be described gently as "dry" and less gently as "sick", though it probably evens out to "reasonably dark". My grandpa also had several photographic books of so-called "freaks", so at an early age I enjoyed looking at pictures of bearded ladies, real-life wolfmen, conjoined twins and women with three legs (a particular favorite, and even now I am not certain why). One of my cousins has a huge tattoo of the Addams family house on her leg, and was featured on one of those Wacky Weddings programs when she got married in a rather gothic ceremony. The Charles Addams cartoons, though, are always relentlessly cheerful in a way. It's gallows humor, but it's damn happy gallows humor. Reading Charles Addams cartoons always cheers me up the same way reading Douglas Adams (whoa! I didn't notice that until now, typing!) books always cheers me up.

I recently wrote a short story about that room where the Addams cartoon books were to be found and about living with my grandmother one spring and summer when I was 23 and she was recovering from a head injury (she had fallen off a ladder). My grandma died nearly two years ago, and her house was recently sold. She had one of the most beautiful persimmon trees in her garden, but it was chopped down for some reason by the new buyers. She was quite an amazing woman - an atheist (or "heathen", as she put it) who raised five children as Catholics, a librarian, a woman who studied law at Stanford way back in the 1930s, a woman of extremely sharp wit and tongue, someone who loved life, someone you'd always want at your dinner parties, but were always a little bit afraid of. She would come visit us up in Alaska and tell my mom that we four kids were getting spoiled (which would make us (the kids) seethe), and that we weren't using our "ly"-endings properly with our adverbs, a slur my mother found worse. Grandma was probably right, but at least I wrote "properly" in the sentence preceding this one. That's hardly Grandma's only legacy, and I doubt that the dark sense of humor was my grandfather's only bequest; it was only the most tangible one. We knew he had touched those glossy pages and chuckled too. I think that made us laugh louder, to prove something to him, our invisible dead grandfather, and to us, who wanted to know him better.

Here is a bridge named after my grandfather. You can follow it to the ultimate in 1950s glamor ships, the Queen Mary.

P.S. I just read that Ewan McGregor ran over the bridge in the film The Island and I think that's pretty damn cool, mainly because Ewan is pretty damn cute.

It was a Cool, Cool Summer

One day a skywriter flew past our house. We were sitting on the porch drinking beer and cava with our friend Stacy. I had to lie on my back to get this shot, but it was worth it.



The tall and beautiful Emma and Simone in the long grass of the sand dunes.



David and Simone appearing *very* excited about the cheese samples at the Tillamook cheese factory. (Photo courtesy of Emma Byrne)



Making drip castles the traditional Desmond way, a skill passed down to me by my mother. (Photo courtesy of Emma Byrne)



A squirrel captured on weird trunk limbs whilst we were camping.



Megan's son T goes on a treasure hunt while camping.



The female pirates of yore, post-treasure hunt. Yo-ho-ho!



20-million-year-old fossils at Beverly Beach.

So close

Everything feels so close. The film within six-eight weeks of completion. The mainstream book deal ever hovering but with the right people at the right publishing company (c'mon, guys, give a girl a break here; you know it's brilliant and a sure-seller!). Girl on a Stick mere days from being officially released at last.

On the also-bright side, I got a job teaching screenwriting and filmmaking, starting in January.

So close. I can taste it. I can almost taste it.

Isn't it time?

I'd Forgotten

I'd forgotten I ever commented on this; that whole time feels very numbed. I stand by what I said at the time, though:

Vox Pop: War in America
25 September 2001

Four American RainbowNetwork readers give their side of the story following the terrorist attacks, the media frenzy surrounding the events, and the possibility of American retaliation in the Middle East.

• I think the media, both British and American, has been very irresponsible in their reportage of the situation: the constant repetition of celebrating Palestinians; the repeated comments of such reactionary U.S. politicians such as Hatch and Baker. I don`t understand where the BBC and Channel 4 are pulling all these right-wing U.S. speakers from to make their so-called considered comments, including some of the American ex-pats they`ve been quoting on the British TV networks. I wish they`d interviewed me. When I talk to my family and friends in the U.S., I have heard nothing but distress and shock, fear of war, abhorrence of the possibility of bombing and hopes for peace. This is a viewpoint that has not been publicised; with typical sterotyping, the British media prefers to show an America that exhibits knee-jerk jingoism.
Kathleen Bryson, writer and editor, London

From an article by Charlotte Cooper

New Review

(^this was one of the pictures that was published with the article)

I had a great new review (article, really) for Girl on a Stick in Just Out magazine today:

“Able to move with ease between mediums, Kathleen Bryson is one of those multifarious talents that Portland attracts like moths to a benevolent flame. She is binational, bisexual and bilingual, and she is or has been an author, editor, actor, director, painter, riot grrrl, model, anthropologist, linguist and abundant storehouse of arcane information. (A few days after I interviewed her for this article, she joined my little crew for the filming of a short movie at the Washougal River; during the course of the day she cursed in Finnish, discussed the finer points of Neanderthal cranial formation with my male lead, and took off her high heels to scuffle barefoot down a steep rocky slope.)...

Girl on a Stick is subversive in that it's a love story in which the couple's ultimate break-up is the happy ending. Equally intriguing are the novel's stylistic innovations… There is extensive, semi-Joycean wordplay, and the text is enlivened with drawings, diagrams and crosswords that drive home the interconnectedness of its themes and the fact, alternately depressing and liberating, that our childhood remains with us forever.”

(article by Tony LeTigre - here in its entirety)

Kenai, Alaska: My Class Reunion Was Great

My old kindergarten pals Cathy and Matthew and, below, Matthew, Matthew's partner Ray and myself. It was a blast, to use some appropriately 1980s slang - I was so glad I went. Everything good-spirited; saw old friends like David Oberg and Dean Carignan and the Wagoner Twins and Rob Innes, all of whom I've known since we were all 3 years old (!) - okay, I've only known Rob since we were 7 - and nearly all of whom are in the first picture, where we're looking at our kindergarten class picture. There's such a real warmth that connects you to people you've known that long - it was wonderful to feel that link after not seeing people for so many years.

New Publication

I just had a short story, "So Cool" published (and let me tell you, I really needed that $50 check that arrived for the story this week).

Devilish pictures for those so inclined.

Eden II: Strange Fruit 1996 (print exhibited)


Succubus 1995 (original exhibited)


Upside-Down Eden 1994/1997 (original exhibited)


Little Devil 1994/1997 (original exhibited)


The Fall 1994 (original exhibited)


Dreamy 1996 (original exhibited)


O my demons.

I am feeling better now. But I still think a 15-16 year slog as an artist is a loooonnng time. It is hard not to be envious of those handed artistic freedom/money/prestige on a platter. And I have simple tastes. I am not talking a $500,000 book deal or a show at the Guggenheim. I am talking regular exhibition space; a steady relationship with a reputable publishing house.

Your Score: N-S-R

You scored 66% Non-Reductionism, 22% Epistemological Absolutism, and 33% Moral Objectivism!

You are an N-S-R: a metaphysical Non-Reductionist, an epistemological Skeptic, and a moral Relativist.

Link: The Sublime Philosophical Crap Test written by saint_gasoline on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

Struggle

I want a book deal for The Matchbox. Is that so wrong? I want Girl on a Stick officially out, I want the film finished. I am so tired of waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting.

I am probably in a different situation than most whining authors - Girl on a Stick *has* a publisher, will be published (soon); I *have* a lovely agent who is repping The Matchbox, and big-deal publishers *are* currently interested in it. The film is *nearly* finished, after five years. Almost. And yet, and yet, I made $8,000 last year. There is no real publishing industry in this town, so employment is, er "frustrating". I am way below poverty-line, and I am tired of struggling. I am tired of struggling as an author, painter, filmmaker. I have been struggling, not to "make it", but just to have a voice, since I was 22. That is 15 years of struggle, and it has worn me down.

I also find it hard to retain optimism in this difficult world.

15 years of graft; I know if I just hang on a little longer, but I am really tired. Really tired. And all I've done, all the paintings, short films I've acted in, films I've created, books I've written, ALL of those I have done while working full-time, as a publisher, editor, waitress, envelope-stuffer, persimmon-polisher, you name it. I am not a privileged artist. I'm just so fucking tired.

The Jetstones

Here.

I Just Can't Stop.

The Witch and the Princess.

Breakfast

Over here.