GC Myers - The Past Returns
It’s the first day of May and I’m entering the stretch run in my preparations for my upcoming June show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria. The body of work is starting to take real shape and I’m getting a feel for how it will hang together during the show. Themes emerge.
This year, I am devoting part of the show to work that is a return to my earlier work, painted in more transparent layers and more subdued tones of color.
The piece shown here is indicative of this work. I call this piece The Past Returns and it is 18″ by 18″ on treated cotton rag paper. This piece to me is very much an homage to the first Red Tree paintings in color and form.
This piece even has the visible spew line at the upper left corner where the liquid paint sometimes breaks free as I’m working it and rushes out of the picture plane. I remember an older gentleman approaching me at an early show and pointing out this feature on my painting. He told me how much he liked the spew lines, a term I had never heard. He explained that he had worked in a foundry and that was their term for the excess metal that broke free of the mold. I liked that and have called them spew lines since then. I haven’t shown spew lines for some time, choosing to scrub and paint them out. But seeing this one brought back the feeling of those earlier pieces and gave it an organic feel, exposing more of the process. It had to stay.
Sometimes the past returns and it is a good thing…
Redtree Times 
I love the “spew lines” in artwork. To me, the spew lines tell me that the artist has given his artwork “life”; the opportunity to “color outside the lines” (as we’re always encouraging children to do). For life is never neat and orderly, we can’t scrub and paint out the daily detours our lives take. So … bravo, keep your spew lines!
Thanks so much. I, too, like to see the hand of the artist in artwork. Spew lines. Sketch marks underneath. Bristles from the brush embedded in the paint. All signs of life…
Well, don’t I feel silly. I’ve looked and looked and I can’t find anything that looks out of place or unusual – no spew lines for me!
But I like the painting, and I like the title. It reminds me of one of my very favorite quotations, from one of Faulkner’s works: The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.
Sorry. The spew line is in the top left corner where the paint spews off the page. I normally paint or rub them out but have opted to show them as I did in earlier times.
Good Faulkner quote.