Woven Together

words & images by Helen Mirkil & Brian H. Peterson

How do you describe a life shared by two artists, a photographer/author and a painter/poet? Start with their mutual love of nature, and an intense connection with the Spirit.

Mirkil is a storyteller whose work draws from many sources: autobiography; the rhythms and mysteries of an internal music; and the history of art. Peterson’s work is rooted in a deeply felt symbolism of light, as well as from classical and sacred music.

Peterson’s battle with Parkinson’s Disease began in 2006. He continued as Chief Curator at the Michener Art Museum for five more years before retiring. The disease has slowed Peterson’s output but he continues to create. His first retrospective, at theArtWorks, took place in 2019 and included one hundred seventy-five images from fifteen bodies of work, as well as samples of his creative videos. At that time he was still printing pictures. His most recent works are improvisational drawings.

Mirkil and Peterson are honoring the gift of creativity in the face of considerable challenges. And they are buoyed by their shared love of the Divine.

“To move, or be moved, is to live…The finest art, like all else

finest in Life, is founded on Love. The presence or absence and

the amount and quality of the love embodied in any work of art

is the sure guide to its value and permanence.

––– William L. Lathrop, 1897

Peterson’s photographs are collected by major museums such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Mirkil’s paintings and drawings are in the collections of the Woodmere Art Museum, the Michener Art Museum, and the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art.

These two artists’ works also include many publications. Peterson has written and/or edited more than fifteen books on the Pennsylvania Impressionist school, as well as creating Pennsylvania Impressionism which is the definitive reference book on the subject. Peterson’s books of his personal essays include The Blossoming of the World, and I Give My Eyes. Mirkil’s first published poetry collection is entitled, Sower on the Cliffs/poems and drawings, and a second poetry collection, From the Whirlwind, will go to press in 2027.