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Archive for May, 2010

Hierarchy

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , on May 20, 2010| 2 Comments »

Hierarchy ---GC Myers

The name I’ve chosen for my exhibition that opens June 11 at the Principle Gallery is Facets.  When looking at this year’s show, I realized that there was a very wide variety of my work in this group.  Not focusing on one specific aspect as in previous years.  There are  a few Red Roof paintings, a few fragmented sky paintings , a few with converging field rows, a few with Red Chairs and a couple of  my small, lone figures.  It’s overall a pretty interesting group that I think shows a fuller spectrum from the prism of my work.  Thus, the name, Facets.

There are also a handful of my Archaeology pieces in this show.  I only do a handful of these per year now.  The piece above, Hierarchy,  is derived from that series although it focuses more on the layers below the surface rather than artifacts, although there is one yellow shoe there.  This painting is a  30″ by 40″ canvas so it has some size which gives it some visual wallop. 

I’ve been working on this piece for about six months, doing a bit then setting  it aside.  I would keep glimpsing at it when I wasn’t working on it, trying to figure where I would go with it.  But I never wanted to rush it, never wanted to push it too hard.  Wanted it to grow naturally, organically.  It wasn’t until yesterday, when I dragged the last few strokes on the canvas, that I felt I finally saw where the painting had settled and it felt whole.

That’s always an interesting feeling, this sense of the work being suddenly complete.  Full.  Alive.  As though the last few embellishments stir something that make it more than mere paint smeared on canvas, make it an entity with a history and a future all its own.   It’s exhilarating  but sad at the same time, as though the life it’s taken on will soon be gone from my life.  I can’t fully explain it but that’s the feeling I felt yesterday with Hierarchy. 

So, I share my studio for the next few weeks with this breathing, living creature as it impatiently waits to shows its true self to the outside world…

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Final Faces

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged , , on May 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Death Mask of Benjamin Franklin

I was looking up some biographical info on Thomas Paine, the English-born pamphleteer whose treatises helped ignite both the American and French Revolutions.  His life would make a wonderfully thought-provoking and sad movie.  Anyway, in the course of doing this research, I came across an image of his death mask.  There was a link that took me to an interesting site, the Laurence Hutton Collection at Princeton University.

The site is a collection of masks of many notables,  some made while the subjects were alive but most from after their death.  It may seem somewhat morbid to some but there was something very beautiful in these faces, as cool and vacant as they may seem.   It’s as though all the layers of history and mythology are stripped away, revealing their true being and common humanity.  There is no posing, no interpretation by the artist to make them appear more heroic or wise.  Just what remains quietly at the end of their existence.  They are what they are.

Death Mask of Napoleon

Death Mask of Thomas Paine

Death Mask of Sir Isaac Newton

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Signet of Eternity

Posted in Favorite Things, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged on May 18, 2010| 4 Comments »

Signet of Eternity

 

This is a new piece that I am calling Signet of Eternity, taken from a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, the great Indian writer/poet.  There’s a great sense of the eternal in this smallish ( a 4″ by 14′ image) painting on paper.  I find it very calming, very soothing, with its clear, cool colors and crisp line work.  There’s a simplicity and delicacy in this that hints at how fleeting and fragile are the the glimpses of eternal forces we are fortunate to witness in our lifetimes. 

I know that sounds pretty metaphysical but I’m just talking about those moments when all the forces of the world present themself before you in an almost perfect harmony and there is a moment of stillness.  Clarity.  As though the world has chosen to reveal its purpose to you for those few precious seconds and in doing so has taken away all the weight of everyday life. 

 I thought about that yesterday as I trudged, head down, through the woods between my home and my studio.  I stopped on the path suddenly and looked around.  The trees were so graceful and  I caught sight of  the trunk of a tall shagbark hickory.  I let my eyes follow it upward to the powerful arms of branches that seemd to plead to the blue patch of sky above.  It was a grand moment and I thought about how often I traveled that path with eyes fixed on the ground before me.  How many times had I let the thoughts and worries in my head carry me without seeing past these things of beauty?  These signets of eternity.

Here is Tagore’s poem:

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And the Winner Is…

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on May 17, 2010| 3 Comments »

And The Title Is...

 

Well, the Name This Painting! Contest for this year is over.

Many thanks to everyone who has participated and sent in thoughtful and imaginative monikers for consideration.  There were over 80 titles submitted and they ranged from the humorous (From Chair to Eternity) to the poetic ( Autumn Has Fallen on My Summer Chair) to a combination of both:

Whose chairs these are I think I know
I bought them at IKEA. Though
They looked the same
It’s clear to see that one is lame.

There were many differing interpretations of the painting, all evocative, and I have been torn all morning trying to choose the one that best fits the piece.  I may have to put finalists up for an online vote in the future because I’ve been struggling with this.  So many worthy efforts.

But, in the end, I do have to choose and I have to choose that which falls closest to how I see the painting.  The winner this year is from Michael Harris from down around Philadelphia for his title:

  Persist (All We Know).

This title struck a chord immediately with me and came close to to summing up a theme that I’ve had running through my head lately, about how we endure this world by simply putting our heads down and trudging ahead on our chosen path.  This will to survive and struggle forward, to persist, is part of us.  It’s all we truly know.  

So you can see why I was taken by this title.  Thank you, Michael, for a great title.  And many, many thanks to everyone who made the effort in sending in their titles.  Your titles will continue to be part of this painting, as well, adjoined on the back for all time.  They all contribute something to it.

Thanks again, everyone!

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Interpret This Painting!? Last Day!

Posted in Biographical, tagged on May 16, 2010| 5 Comments »

Name This Painting!

 

Today is the last day for entries in this year’s Name This Painting! Contest.  The competition ends at midnight tonight and I’ll be announcing the winner within the next day or two.  It may take me a while to choose between some of these titles.

There have been some pretty evocative titles that give me real pause.  Some even disturb me a bit.  It’s just interesting to see how others perceive a painting, to see what they are reading in the work.  I am sometimes startled at how different some of these perceptions are from my own.  Startled but not surprised.  It’s obvious that  we all interpret things we see or hear in different ways.   If not, we would all see things the same way and draw the same conclusions, leaving us with a consensus in everything we did.  This is certainly not the case in anything we attempt as a people.

Art is no different.  I think I may have told of an encounter at an opening where a viewer stood before a painting of mine of two intertwined trees.  To me,  it was about the dependency of the two trees on one another, about how they became one entity, gathering strength from each other.   This person saw it in a completely different light.  In their eyes, it was about domination and subjugation, about violence.  This person was quite disturbed by the painting and I was left standing there, looking at the piece, wondering if it had somehow exposed some hidden corner of my personal psychology that I didn’t realize I was uncovering.   I felt like I was being accused by this person of being a dominator.  A bully.  A rapist.

I realized quickly, after taking a quick inventory of myself, that this interpretation was more about this person’s psychology, about their own personal agenda,  than mine.  I felt better but the episode lingered with me.  This person’s reading of and reaction to a painting that,  to most, would be anything but controversial seemd so out of step with its intent.  It made me better understand how difficult it is to put anything out in the world without creating some adverse reaction to some extent.  As an artist, you hope to create something that translates in a universal manner but it’s a rare event given the way we all see things through lenses tinted with our own personal biases.  But I just keep trying.

So give this painting a look and give me a look at how your mind works by submitting a title……..

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Reflections

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, Video, tagged , , on May 15, 2010| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been showing a lot of new work lately that I will be showing at my upcoming show in june at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA.  This is a 24″‘ by 30″ painting that I finished back in February which has been above my studio’s fireplace for most of that time. I look at it several times a day and have yet to want to alter it in any way.  I find the sparseness of detail adds to the coolness and focus that I think make this piece work.

I didn’t have a title for this piece, even after months of looking at it.   I sometimes struggle with titling certain pieces that I’ve lived with for a while and seem to strike an inner chord with me.  This was one such painting.  But the time has come to start putting names to paintings.  I have a certain way of doing that that I’ve outlined before where I will set up a piece, pretending that I have never seen it before. I will turn away from it then turn back quickly, taking it in and grasping whatever first strikes me about the piece.  Color, shape, mood—–whatever jumps at me.  Then, taking that first impression, it becomes easier to find the right name.

But sometimes it doesn’t work and there are pieces that don’t adhere to this method.  Like this piece.  So I wait and hope something jumps out at some point or that I stumble across the right words for it.  I was looking for something else earlier and came across an old song from the late 60’s from a group, Marmalade, a Scottish band that had long since left my memory.  While their band’s name was forgettable, their best known hit, Relections On My Life,  was not.  Great song that rekindled old memory and I immediately knew I had a title for this painting: Reflections on a Life.

Sometimes you find things in unlikely places.  For those of you who don’t remember Marmalade, here they are:

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Kathedra

Posted in Opinion, Recent Paintings, tagged on May 14, 2010| 3 Comments »

The Latin word for chair is cathedra, coming from the Greek kathedra,which gave us the word cathedral.  Without saying any more, that is the basis for this painting’s title, Kathedra.

This is a painting I finished several weeks ago which has been leaning against the stones of my studio’s  fireplace since then.  It is a 24″ by 24″ canvas and it catches my eye on a regular basis.  Perhaps it is the fragmented look of the sky with what some people call a stained-glass look. 

While I understand people seeing it as looking like stained-glass,  I see the lines in the sky as being fractures or seams in the fabric of time and memory.  It’s a difficult thing to explain, as are many things that live deep within us, things that make up our inherent system of belief and understanding.  Things we instinctively know or believe even though we may not know why or how this  even came to be.  I’m not talking about religious belief so much as I’m talking about how the unseen forces and energies of the natural world really operate around us,  just beyond our perception.   

Maybe it is the physics of belief.

That being said, perhaps that is what this represents for me.  The seat of belief before a mysterious world that we barely know and can’t even begin to understand.  Kathedra…

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Last Four Days!

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged on May 13, 2010| 5 Comments »

Name This Painting!

Just a reminder that there are only four more days in this year’s Name This Painting! Contest.  The contest ends at midnight on Sunday, May 16.  Simply submit a title that you feel fits the painting shown at the right and submit it through the comment section of this post or email me at info@gcmyers.com. 

If your title is chosen, you’ll win a pair of very limited  signed prints as well as a signed and dedicated copy of my book, In Quiet Places.  And even if your title doesn’t make the final cut, it will be placed on the back of the painting so that it will live with the painting for all posterity.

So far it has been a pretty large group of very imaginative titles so I have my work cut out in choosing one that I feel lines up well with the painting. 

So be creative and give it a whirl!

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dreaming big

Posted in Quote, Uncategorized, tagged on May 12, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Before the Gates-- GC Myers

 

Whenever I speak to a group of people I inevitably find myself fretting afterwards over things I either said or, more likely, did not say.  Sometimes I wake up early in the morning with the thought of things I wish I had said pushing aside my dreams.   Such was the case from speaking yesterday to a group of college students.  I said many things but I’m not sure how much I truly communicated to these kids.  I wish I had simply stood up and uttered this short quote from Goethe:

Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.

That pretty much sums up all I wanted to get across to these students, these budding artists. 

Dream big.  Think big.  Embrace big.

Be big.

What more could I say after that?  They probably would get more from a call to arms for an attitude than all the nuts and bolts advice I could ever offer.  If they take on the posture of being and dreaming big and truly take it to heart, they will find a way.  But they have to have that dream before my words will make any sense at all to them now.

I could go on and on and it would all amount to the same pile of meaningless words as I felt uttered yesterday, so I believe I’ll stand pat with my Goethe quote.

I am available for commencement addresses.

And children’s parties.

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Carry The Weight

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged on May 11, 2010| 4 Comments »

Carry the Weight- GC Myers

I’m off this morning to speak with a group of college students at a local coffeehouse.  Every year,  a class in drawing or painting from our local community college meets at the end of the semester with professor Dave Higgins to discuss what their next step might be: what opportunities are there in the art field, how they should proceed, if they can make a living, etc.  The things that lay beyond the nuts and bolts instruction of the class.   Dave likes to have me come in to serve as an example of a local guy who was once much like them, attending the same school with the same concerns and self-doubts, but was now living as a professional artist.

Whenever I speak with students, I try to speak less about technical aspects of painting and more about building up the belief that they have a unique point of view.  They have to understand that there will always be someone more talented than themselves out there, someone with greater technical skills and more education.  This is unavoidable but they can’t let it deter them.  Because success in the field of art, and other fields as well, is not necessarily about who is the most talented or who has the most letters behind their name.  Success comes from making the most of your talents.
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I know that’s an old chestnut but it’s true nonetheless.  Art is about  gathering  and refining whatever talent you might have and using it to communicate your vision of the world to others.  It’s this belief, that your view of the world is as important and viable as any other,  that transcends other limitations.  Once they have this belief, the hard work and the sacrifices needed to succeed don’t seem so daunting. 
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So that’s what I try to accomplish with this talk.  Make them think about their view of the world. Let them know that their feelings and thoughts are no different nor less important than anyone else’s.   Their voice can be heard if they so wish.
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That’s a newer piece at the top of the page, a small painting on paper that I call Carry the Weight.  I thought it fit well with this post even though I’m not sure what is in the red bag.  I have painted this fellow a number of times and he remains a mystery to me.  Maybe that’s his purpose.
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Who knows?

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