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Archive for November, 2009

Ragtime

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Influences, Neat Stuff, tagged , on November 20, 2009| 1 Comment »

This week, after having made deliveries of new work to the galleries that represent me over the last week,  I’ve been catching up on some maintenance around the studio, getting things ready for the upcoming winter.   It’s a break from thinking about painting and a chance to recharge the batteries.  Sometimes much needed recharging.

As I mentioned in a post a few days ago, I’ve also been spending a little time looking at old newspapers as I do a little research into a few ancestors.  It’s also really interesting to see an article concerning a relative next to an ad of that time, such as the one shown here, with Annie Oakley endorsing a dandruff shampoo.  It makes you realize what a transitionary period those early years of the 1900’s were, with so many aspects of rapid progress taking place in a world that had changed much slower for centuries before.

For instance, in the article that was near this ad, there was an account of a wrestling match here in Elmira.  Wrestling was a big deal around here back then with matches held several times a week in various locations such as men’s clubs, hotels and the gyms of local athletic clubs.  The story here told of the night opening with a vaudeville-type tumbling exhibition from a touring wrestling family complete with selections sung in rich baritones.  There was a short boxing match followed by someone performing ragtime, which was new to that time.  The headline event, usually a match between heated local rivals or a local favorite facing a touring pro, finished up the night.

I had heard stories that my grandfather, Frank “Shank” Myers, had lived and participated in this rough and tumble world but had never seen any evidence until I started reading these old papers.  But there he was, a 17 year old kid described as an Eastside mat ruffler, rolling around in smoky halls with strangleholds and body throws.  In one little notice, he was advertised as the preliminary match for a match headlined by Americus, shown here, who was touring pro who would come into town and take on the  best of the locals.  It was to be held at a hall in a local hotel that had been remodeled for the event.

I was able to find several articles with his exploits but only in a short period of time due to the lack of continuity in the newspaper availability from that time.  I did find a few pieces from a few years later, in a match from Binghamton, a slightly larger city about 60 miles away, between a Binghamton man and a well-known champ from NYC, where he was mentioned.  He was introduced to the crowd as the lightweight champ from Elmira and he issued a challenge to the Binghamton grappler, for a match to be held there, in Binghamton , or Elmira.

I may never know if this match ever took place but it ‘s great to finally fill in little details of a world that only existed in a cloud of familial myth. An interesting time…

 

 

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Control of the Narrative

Posted in Biographical, Influences, Painting, tagged , on November 19, 2009| Leave a Comment »

This is a painting from back in 2002 titled Muse.  It was part of a series I was painting at that time, in the months after 9/11, that some of my galleries still call my Dark Work. It was painted in a style that I call my obsessionist style these days, meaning that it is painted by building layers of color over a dark ground as opposed to the reductive style I have used so much in the past where I apply a lot of wet paint, puddles, then pull it off the surface until I reach the desired effect.

When I was doing these paintings they seemed like a stark contrast to the reductive work, especially given the tone of that time.  They were well received although not with same gusto as the lighter, more transparent,  work.  I felt very strongly about this work but allowed my desire to please the galleries need for my most sellable work override my desire to pursue this work to further levels.  I moved back to primarily painting the wetter reductive work and was able to continue to push that work further through color and texture.  I never regretted the move back to this work but there was always a little nagging voice in the back of my mind that I hadn’t pushed the other work to its full destination and had let outside influences hinder an inner process.

I have begun to see my body of work as my own personal narrative, the story of who I am and how I am seeing my world at any given time.  In order for it to be so it must be an honest and complete reflection, guided by my own inner muse and not outside forces telling me what I should or should not do.  It took a while but I realized that I have the ability and right to control my own personal narrative, to tell my story in my own way.

I’ve done this in many ways for years already.  I am constantly given ideas for paintings or am requested to do commissions but seldom do I follow up on them unless they fit in with where I see my work heading.  In that aspect, I normally reject outside influence.  I stick to my narrative.

The piece above, Muse, actually fits this post well in that it now belongs to a man who asked me to do a painting of his son, a truly gifted guitarist.  He sent me photos and they were wonderful.  He was long and lanky with a really interesting ethereal  look, a portrait painter’s dream.  In fact when I looked at the pictures I could only see him as painted by other painters I know.  I struggled for a while trying to do something with this but in the end I realized it wasn’t part of who I was at that point, not part of my narrative.  I let it slide and after a long while, apologetically explained this to the father who was extremely gracious.

So I am back focusing more, at this time, on this obsessionist work, allowing it to be a bigger part of my story.  I will continue to paint in the other style but I just feel that there is something waiting to be told, something to be discovered in this other work at this time.  That is my decision made without outside influence, my choice for my personal narrative.

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A Different Time and World

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Influences, tagged , , , , , on November 18, 2009| 2 Comments »

I wrote the other day about doing some genealogy about my great-grandfather, Gilbert Perry, and how interesting it has been in reconnecting with an ancestor about who I knew so little about.  One of the great pleasures has been reading the old newspapers from the late 1800’s that are available online via  the Northern New York Library System.  I am constantly fascinated in browsing the ads and notices of the times, seeing how day to day life changed and evolved.

This ad for a balloon ascension with Professor Squire, a la The Wizard of Oz, at the Franklin County Fair in Malone, NY appeared in the September 2, 1872 edition of the Malone Palladium.  It was on the front page alongside accounts from the Republican convention of that year where Ulysses S. Grant was nominated for the presidency as well as death notices, ads for pianos (they were selling Steinways up there!) and dry goods.  Ads looking for tin peddlers, a furniture dealer selling metal burial caskets, a lumber dealer, carriage painters and a mail order ad for a tea dealer on Wall Street in NYC.  There was a list of  rules of behavior that would be enforced at the Fair.  No drinking or betting on the trotters.

It was all pretty interesting, a glimpse into that time, but the part that caught my eye was near the top of the page, just under the death notices.  It was a Notice of Liberation where my great-great grandfather, Francis Perry, was giving Gilbert Perry, my great-grandfather, the remainder of his minority, giving him freedom from furhter financial obligations to his father.  Gilbert was free to transact business as he saw fit.

It was at this point that Gilbert formed his first crew and headed into the North woods with his first contract to deliver logs.  He was just 18 years old.  He continued to be a logger for the next 60 years, only stopping a few years before his death at age 81.  My Aunt Norma has recollections of visiting his farm in St. Regis Falls when she was small girl in the early 1930’s.  She said there were big log sleds scattered all around, the type pulled by teams of horses.  He was throwback even then to an earlier time before big tractors and chainsaws.

So in this little piece in this little newspaper from the north I see the beginning of my great-grandfather’s world, one that led to my grandmother’s much different world and to my father’s even more different world to my world which would probably seem incomprehensible to a man so at home in the woods.  Or maybe not…

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Body of Work

Posted in Opinion, Painting, tagged , , , on November 17, 2009| 2 Comments »

I’ve had the term body of work in my head recently and was reminded of it once again by a couple of sports related stories in recent days.  First, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick made a risky decision this past weekend that failed and may have paved the way for his team’s loss.  This morning, sports talk radio was filled with analysts calling it a bonehead move but one analyst made me think when he said that sure, it was a mistake but he wouldn’t judge him on this one mistake. Instead, he would look at his whole body of work.

Then there is the case of Andre Agassi who, in his recent biography, revealed that during a year in the 90’s he had regularly used crystal meth during the tennis season.  He was widely attacked for this revelation, many judging his entire life on this episode of bad judgment.  He expressed surprise at the reaction, saying he hoped people would judge him by the whole of his life and not a time he openly and honestly regrets.  He wanted to be judged for his body of work.

It made me think.  How many people out there have judged me on one bad moment I may have had?  Something idiotic I said?  How many people was I holding judgement on whose only exposure to me was in a less than stellar moment in their lives?  How many of these people had changed, grown and evolved, yet I only knew them from a much less developed time in their lives?

I guess the same dynamics are in play when I speak of my painting as body of work.  There are certainly people who have seen my work and it may not have hit them favorably at that point and they formed a judgement that becomes set in their minds, making it hard to overcome.  Like Belichick and Agassi probably realize, there’s not a lot that can be done except to try to focus on what you can control, to try to constantly evolve and improve and create a body of work that shines brighter than the inevitable lowlights we all encounter in our lives.

I try to keep that in mind when I’m in the studio, that I cannot worry about those whose opinions of my work I can’t control.  I can only concern myself in satisfying that person whose opinion I can control and that’s me.  If I can do that, I will create a body of work  worthy of the most critical eye.

The piece at the top is Climbing Beyond the Blue and is on its way to the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA today.  I’m on the road again, visiting my friends in Erie before the holidays and delivering some new work.

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Adirondack Memories

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Personal Mythology, tagged , , , on November 16, 2009| 8 Comments »

Logging near Forestport, NYThis is a scene from the Adirondack Mountains of New York near the town of Forestport, taken in the 1890’s.   There’s a possibility this is one of my great-grandfather’s crews.  I don’t really know.  Never knew much about  the man as I was growing up, didn’t even know his full name.  My family had little link to the past, few photos and very little oral history.  So little was known of our ancestors and their lives. Thanks to the access to old records and newspapers that is now available via the internet I have been able to find out much that would have been otherwise lost to our family.

For example, the great-grandfather I mentioned above was known to have ran a lumber camp in the Adirondacks, supposedly in the north near St. Regis Falls, where my father’s mother ( who died in 1979) was born and raised.  That was about the extent of our knowledge of the man.  I knew his last name was Perry and he ran a lumber camp.

A couple of years back, I did a quick Google search with what little info I had and much to my surprise an entry appeared.  There was a Gilbert Perry listed in a book from 1895 profiling the citizens of Oneida County, NY, in the southern part of the Adirondacks.  That didn’t seem to jive with what I knew but when I read the article it stated he was from St. Regis Falls and maintained a farm there as well.  His children were listed and I recognized one name as being a sister of my grandmother, who was not listed as she wasn’t yet born.

It was a thrill to finally find something on an ancestor, something that gave their life form.  I learned that he was a hard-working, ambitious entrepreneur who ran a number of lumbering enterprises as well as a couple of retail stores and his farms.  He was considered one of the pioneers of Adirondack logging, having several camps and crews of men numbering in the hundreds along with 50 or more teams of horses.  At the time, he was signed to bring in the largest contract of lumber in the Adirondacks.

After that I started doing more research and a whole new world  opened up to me when I came across the digitized newspapers from that time and region.  Local newspapers at that time were a true mirror of the area and people they covered, giving many details on their everyday lives and their travels.  I was able to piece together a full picture of the life my grandmother’s family lived in St. Regis Falls and Forestport.  I was even able to come across a full account of my grandmother’s wedding to my grandfather, something my dad and his siblings had never heard or seen.  It gave my memories of my grandmother a new depth.

I was even able to find numerous mentions of his lumber camps, including an account of a normal day in the camp, in a number of books outlining the history of the Adirondacks along with many stories of the men who worked for him.  One was a character named Atwell Martin, called the Hermit of North Creek, who is recalled in many stories and tall tales, including one where Paul Bunyan, having heard the tales of Martin’s exploits, traveled east to visit him.  They got along famously at first but ultimately ended up in a fight where trees were upended and used as clubs and the great Paul Bunyan ends up slain.  His body was buried in the headwaters of the Black River, the dam at North Lake.

I am still doing research but it’s an interesting and different world I keep uncovering, filled with great exploits and hard lives in a harsh environment.  It’s just been a thrill to find a link to a past of some sort…

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Mingus Eyes

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Painting, Video, tagged on November 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers 2002Sometimes, at this point in my year, I spend a considerable amount of my time revisiting past work, going through old image files or leafing through older work that I still have in my possession.  It’s kind of a reminder of how my mind has been sparked in the past and I’m always looking for a revival of that spark, especially at the end of a period of time when I have been working a lot and have fallen into what I feel is a too predictable pattern with my painting.

I tend to focus on the odd little pieces when I’m doing this.  Pieces with figures in them, odd compositions, odd shapes- things of that nature.  I came across this little triptych from 2002 and had to linger over for a bit.  I remember it well, the way the surface had a smoothness, almost enamel-like finish and the way the three pieces played off one another.   I never fully understood the meaning behind this piece but I was always reminded by it of the music of Richard Thompson, a writer of many wonderful distinctive songs, many of them with dark undertones.

So, I’ll keep looking back, hoping for a rekindling of inspiration,  and in the meantime, here’s some Richard Thompson with Mingus Eyes…

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Will

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , on November 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism;

the way you play it is free will .        —Nehru

Will- GC Myers 2009The words of longtime Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru seem to fit well with what I felt from this new piece that I delivered this past week to the Haen Gallery in Asheville, NC.  It’s called Will and is a 10″ by 30″ canvas.

For me, this piece is about enduring, weathering the winds and tides of change while sticking to one’s objective.  I see a lot of strength in this tree.  A lot of will power. It bends, it strains, yet stands.

As Nehru inferred, we are all subject to strains and obstacles that we could easily let waylay our best laid plans.  But we also all possess the ability to will ourselves past these barriers, if we only choose to do so.  This decision to do so is one that many give up on much early in their struggle and settle for a mediocre version of what they foresaw for themselves.  The tree in this painting refuses to settle.

That’s what I get from this piece.  Maybe you’ll see something other than this and come away with a completely different read on this painting.  That’s okay and as valid as my own translation. Hopefully, it will have something to say to you…

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The Boys

Posted in Favorite Things, Neat Stuff, tagged , on November 13, 2009| 5 Comments »

Raccoon and the BoysI came across a group of photos from a few years back that brought back very bittersweet memories.  The photos were of a pair of feral cats that took up residence around our place along with a three legged raccoon that was in the vicinity for a short time.  The cats tolerated the raccoon’s presence and they never seemed too upset when he helped himself to the food we put out for them.

The cats were an interesting pair.  We called the tiger one Partner and the other Ben although we always called him simply Black & White.  Partner and Ben were the Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin characters from the movie  Paint Your Wagon.  The two cats had started coming to our place in the woods a few years before and came separately.  Ben was super skittish and would never let you get close enough to touch him but hung around and came to understand when there was food available.  Partner was more affable and approachable but he only came once in a great while, at which point ben would attack him and chase him away, off into the woods.

This went on for a year or so and we seldom saw Partner then one year, as a very bitter winter began to close in Partner came and made a stand.  Instead of running away he held his ground against  Ben.  It was horrible.  For a day or so, they were in what seemed to be non-stop combat outside our house.  Under our house.  Maybe on our house, I don’t know.  There was thumping and screeching  and all sorts of awful noise.  We would try to intervene but they would run out of sight and pause for the time we out there then resume immediately after we went back inside.

The BoysThe next morning when I put out some food for them, they both emerged.  They were a mess with bloody cuts and scrapes on both.  Yet they were together now with not a hint of malice between them.  From that time on they were inseparable.  They spent that very cold winter sleeping together  in a makeshift box I had built for them, one on top of the other.  When they would walk through the yard or up our walkway, they would walk in step and would shove their shoulders together as though they were joined at the shoulder.  As spring and summer came, they would lazily sleep on our walkway, often spooning as they laid together with their legs wrapped around each other or would sleep facing one another, their paws lightly touching.  When our female cat, Tinker, was outside, Partner would make attempts to be friendly but Ben wanted no part of her and, in an obviously jealous act,  would aggressively push himself between the two.  It was an amazing transformation from their previous animosity to this sweet friendship.

It was short lived however as they both passed away later that next winter, both disappearing with days of one another, obviously very ill.  We’ve always regretted not being able to do more for them but through this time they never let us get too close to them, always being wary of any attempts to corral them.  So when I see these photos I am torn between the sheer sadness of their hard fought existence and the absolute joy and comfort they had found in their love for one another.  A rare thing indeed…

Racoon and the Boys II

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And Your Third Greatest Russian Is…

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged , , , , on November 12, 2009| 3 Comments »

StalinAh, it’s good to be back in my studio after spending three days racing through seven states to deliver new work to galleries in Virginia and North Carolina.  While it was good to spend a bit of time at the galleries, discussing the state of the art business at the moment, it’s always better to be here, focusing more on creation than on promotion and sales.

I was able to listen to a lot of music while driving as well as catch some interesting stories on public radio that gave me something to think about.  Yesterday, as I drove in the early morning rain of Virginia, I heard a story on NPR concerning the way Joseph Stalin is being viewed in present day Russia.  In a poll last year, Stalin was chosen by Russians, in a sort of American Idol style vote, as the third greatest Russian of all time.  Despite the many millions, yes, millions of Russian citizens who were put to death by Stalin, despite the political purges and gulags and Soviet policies that caused a type of artificial famine that killed far more citizens than any natural famine more than once, the current populace said that this Man of Steel was their guy.

Interesting.

In the story, a present day student compared Stalin favorably to the Adolph Hitler of the early 1930’s, in that both restored pride and self-confidence to their citizens in trying times.  He also cited Stalin’s part in defeating Hiltler’s Germany in WW II as another reason for his positive view of Stalin.

Other present day Russians have said that what Russia needs now is another Stalin.  Rootin’ Tootin’ Vlad Putin has started reintroducing Stalin to the Russian public, reinserting verses praising Stalin to the national anthem that were long ago taken out.

It gave me a bit of a chill.

This revisionist history takes place everywhere when the times become a bit more difficult.  The older population who lived through the Stalin era see the chaos of the current Russia and begin to romanticize for what they now remember as the stability of Stalin’s time.  I have to admit, there is a certain level of stability in under a Stalin-like dictatorship.  One doesn’t have a lot of choices or freedoms to clutter the mind.   Most decisions are out of your hands.  For many, this freedom from choice, when viewed through the distance of time, seems almost nostalgic.  Ah, the way we were.

The real question is, when there is this nostalgia for someone like Stalin, when the mindset of a large swath of the population begins to overlook the atrocities of a man like Stalin and the horror of those times, where is that country headed?

I don’t mean to sound like some McCarthy-era siren, wailing that the Russian are coming, the Russians are coming!  No duck-and-cover here.  I just am mystified by how the nationalism of a people is always morphing and how those in power can manipulate the past to fit the present to achieve their desire future.  I hope I don’t live long enough to see the German  people name Hitler as the greatest German ever…

Just something to think about.

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The Weight

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged , , on November 11, 2009| 2 Comments »

GC Myers The ListeningWell, I’m still on the road but I should be home and back in the studio tomorrow morning which is always a relief.  Back to the routine that I really like and can thrive in.

As I drive I listen to my iPod, usually just leaving it on shuffle so that anything can pop up.  Sometimes things come on that I haven’t heard in a while and it’s always a pleasant surprise.

Here’s one that always makes me wish I could sing.  It’s from Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz which is a documenting of The Band‘s last concert.  It’s a great film and this is a great version of The Weight with a lot of help from the Staple Singers.

Enjoy!

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