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Archive for October, 2012

Idyll By the Lake

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on October 16, 2012| 2 Comments »

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That valleys, groves, hills, and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

–Christopher Marlowe

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These lines are an excerpt from a poem from Marlowe which is  considered an idyll, a poem which typically depicts a peaceful idealization of rural life.  I chose to use the word in the title of the painting shown here, Idyll By the Lake, which is part of my show which opens Saturday at the Kada Gallery in Erie.  The painting is a 12″ by 36″ canvas and has that  feel of a rustic haven that comes with the word.

The feature of this piece that stands out for me is the small round lake that is the focal point here.  I made it appear as thought the viewer was looking directly down on it which gives it a round , flat appearance on the canvas.  There was just something that I liked in the way the lake appeared this way.  It reminded me of the eye from a peacock’s tail feathers and I liked that shape and color contrasted with the lines and warmth of the rest of the painting.

But , while the painting is blissfully upbeat, I still think it is strengthened by the darkness that comes from underneath the bright colors.  It  gives it a bit of an edge, a feeling of wariness that takes away that feeling of cockeyed optimism that it might otherwise have.  Kind of like a shepherd who happily watches over his safe flock but knows that he must always be watchful because there may always be great danger  just out of sight.  Maybe the Red Tree is such a shepherd here, enjoying such a peaceful moment.  Taking in all the pleasure and satisfaction that the momentary idyll offers while keeping an eye for whatever might emerge from over that next rise.

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Lowe Country

Posted in Early Paintings, Music, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 15, 2012| 3 Comments »

A lot of things happened this weekend that I could comment on here.   There was Felix Baumgartner  flying a balloon up tot he very edge of space then jumping out to plummet at over 600 MPH back to earth.  Then there was the world of baseball where Derek Jeter fractured his ankle, bringing a state of depression to Yankee fans everywhere. And yesterday I delivered the work yesterday for my show, Inward Bound, which opens this coming Saturday at the Kada Gallery in Erie.

An interesting thing came up while talking with owner Kathy DeAngelo at the Kada.   Her son, David, who lives on the West Coast, had called her and had told her that he thought someone was using one of my images on an album cover, something called Lowe Country.  He was positive that it was my imagery.  At first, I thought it might be coincidental, that it was an image from someone that  had a style that resembled my work.  But i thought I would look it up just to be sure.

So this morning I googled Lowe Country and, clicking on a link, was shocked to see one of my paintings staring out at me.  It was an older piece, one from around 1997 and I couldn’t quite place  the exact piece or where it might have been sold.  But I was sure it was mine.  It had to be or there was someone out there who was my artistic doppelganger.

The album was a tribute album featuring musicians, primarily from the  country and Americana fields,  doing covers of songs by  Nick Lowe, which I thought was good because I have always been a fan of his work since the 70’s, especially when he was with Dave Edmunds in the band Rockpile .  That didn’t help much.  I still couldn’t figure out how my work had ended up there on the cover.  I clicked on a few more links trying to find something that would give me some sort of an an idea.  Nothing.  Then I clicked on an interview with the producer of the project and the founder of  Fiesta Red Records.  His name was Robert Seidenberg.

In a flash it all made sense.  It was his painting, or at least a portion of it.  He had bought this painting  from the West End Gallery when he was with Hollywood Records   many years ago.  My mind eased a bit at this revelation and I became pleased that the image was being used, even though I was not getting even a nod of recognition from it.  I was just thrilled to see that image , especially when I saw that the whole painting  wrapped around the entire jacket.  Looks good.

I am not sure if I will get in touch with Mr. Seidenberg.  I probably will if only to let him know I approve of its use and to let him know that he should be more thorough in using imagery in the future because of the ownership rights to images that artist maintain even after the original painting is sold.  But at least I am aware that it’s out there.  Thanks, David, for bring it to my attention.

[ PS : Found the Liner Notes and indeed I am credited.  The painting was Lakelover  from 1998.]

Here’s one of the tracks from the album, Heart of the City, from Chatham County Line.

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Food For Thought Lecture

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on October 13, 2012| 4 Comments »

This is the grand staircase that joins the newer addition that houses the spectacular Thaw Collection of American Indian Art to the original building of the Fenimore Art Museum in lovely Cooperstown .   I am honored to have an exhibit of my work, Internal Landscape: The Paintings of GC Myers,  hanging in this wonderful facility. It has went better than I had hoped thus far.  The response has been extremely positive  according to  the museum staff and  I have been contacted by many people who had not known of my work.  The show continues to hang there until the end of the year, December 31.

A reminder here that next month I will be giving a talk at the museum as part of their Food For Thought lecture series.  The event consists of a luncheon followed by the talk.  There is a fee for this event.  My talk there is on Wednesday, November 7, beginning at 12:30 PM and running until around 2:30.   If you’re interested in finding out a bit more about how the work came about and evolved over the years, this is a good opportunity to do so in a beautiful and comfortable setting.  Hope to see you there!

You can get more info by clicking here or by calling  the museum  at (607) 547-1461.

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Third Stone From the Sun

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on October 12, 2012| 5 Comments »

After yesterday’s post, one that featured a NASA photo of Rhea, a moon of Saturn, I was asked by Clint from the Principle Gallery if perhaps I might be doing some outer space themed paintings in the future.  I really hadn’t given it much thought , to be honest, but I suddenly remembered a few pieces I had painted many years ago, long before I ever thought of showing my work in public.  They were experiments, the sort of thing I often worked on then when I was working out color and form.  Abstractions, really.  Most were pretty bad.  But there was one that I always really enjoy  when I stumble across it when browsing through a bin of old work.

Shown here at the top, this piece from 1994  has Third Stone From the Sun written on a corner.  It’s a watercolor that was purely an exploration of color and shape.  When I was done it struck me that it had the feel of some sort of galactic apocalypse, as though our Earth had suddenly decided to linejump  Mercury and Venus  to get closer to the Sun and this was the result.

It’s not a great piece but it makes me happy despite the obvious downside to the situation it depicts.  At the time, I remember that it made me consider following this abstracted path but I opted to follow the one that has led me here.  I often wonder what I would be doing at this moment had I chosen that path.  Probably not writing this.  But you can’t linger too long over such questions because you will never know.  The paths through time fade quickly behind us.

Here’s the song that inspired the title, Third Stone From the Sun.  It’s classic Jimi Hendrix in a mellow form.

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Rhea

Posted in Favorite Things, Photography, tagged , , , on October 11, 2012| 5 Comments »

I am always stunned by the photos sent back to us from our robotic spacecraft as they explore our solar system.  The sheer beauty and magnitude of these images really puts our own world into a different perspective, one that is humbling to say the least.  The vastness of these shots makes our personal concerns seem small and insignificant yet, at the same time, inspiring.There’s also an elegance to them that is so appealing.

I can’t explain this fully so early in the morning.

This photo from a few years back is one of my favorites.  Take from NASA“s  Cassini-Huygens craft which is exploring around Saturn, this image is like a beautifully constructed abstract painting with cool colors and stark geometry.  Beautiful.  The image consists of one of  Saturn‘s moons, Rhea with the gray atmosphere of Saturn acting as a backdrop.  The image is taken in a way that looks directly at the very edge of the rings of Saturn which creates the black band that cuts across the image.  The result is just a beautiful image, one that I find myself just staring at for long moments at a time while I consider how we fit into this vast puzzle.

 

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Landscape Painter

Posted in Influences, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , on October 10, 2012| 4 Comments »

Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.

— William Hazlitt, in The Edinburgh Review, 1824

I consider myself primarily a landscape painter.  Oh, I periodically have done some figurative work, some still lifes and even some purely abstract work but I always gravitate back to the landscape.  I think the attraction comes from the universality of the landscape as a genre and a visual language.  It crosses all barriers and seldom needs context or explanation for anyone to fully understand it.  A Maori tribesman might as easily appreciate a landscape such as the painting above as you or me.  We  all have an intimate relationship, our own dialogue, with the landscape around us.  It defines our world.

I tend to think of landscape painting in these terms rather than as William Hazlitt, the British art and literary critic of the 19th century, portrays it in the quote above although maybe there is a certain misanthropy involved on some days.  I know that I prefer the company of the landscape over that of most people on many days.   I also know that there are collectors who were disappointed when the paths that lead into my paintings began to first appear, feeling that any sign of man in the landscape only diminished the piece.   But the paths stayed because I still relate to the landscapes in my paintings as thought they are representative of the human race’s emotional relationship with the land rather than mere  pretty pictures of places of a world devoid of humans, as appetizing as that may sound.   It comes down to the fact that we are part of the land.  We  shape it  and are shaped by it. We rise from it, live off it and ultimately return to it.  We are the landscape.

The painting at the top is Where the Road Ends, a 20″ by 60″ canvas that is part of my show at the Kada Gallery which opens October 20th.

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Inward Bound

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , on October 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I am putting the finishing touches on the new group of paintings that make up my upcoming show at the Kada Gallery in Erie , PA, which opens on October 20th.  The name of the show is Inward Bound which is also the name of this new painting, a smaller piece at only 4″ by 7″ on paper.  I normally try to have a substantially larger painting than this as the title piece for a show but I really thought the title was perfect for both the show and this painting, regardless of size.

The title refers to an inner journey of discovery.  The Red Chair is facing symbolically inward, away from the broad expanse of night sky with the moon and stars, which represents the  reference points by which the ancients guided their travels.  But there are things in this world that can’t be found in all the lengthy expeditions in this world, things that must be  first uncovered within ourselves.  Wisdom.  Love.  These are not things that cannot be discovered in any outer travel unless one first looks inward.  It is sometimes easier to seek the external  simply because traveling inward  is the scariest trip that many of us will ever face.  It’s not an easy thing to face the absolute truth about our own reality, to stare down our own flaws and shortcomings.

But the rewards can be priceless.  For some it is wisdom,  a calmness  seated in the knowledge that they are completely at ease with who and where they are, inside and out.  And that’s what I see in this simple, small painting.

All aboard…

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Alvin Langdon Coburn

Posted in Photography, tagged , , , , on October 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I came across a group of photos that caught my eye on Luminous Lint, one of my favorite sites to visit and one that I have mentioned here a number of times in the past.  They were by a photographer who I was not familiar with, not that is an unusual thing.  The name was Alvin Langdon Coburn and the photos were scenes of London from the turn of the  twentieth century.  They were quite beautiful and evocative, gray and misty in an artistic way that captured all the preconceptions one might have about London of that time.  The photo shown above, one of Hyde Park from 1905,  was the first one I saw and it immediately struck a chord with me.  I loved the composition with the way the trees jutted into the picture frame and how the ghostly carriage hovered in the background.

Coburn was an American from Boston who had a most impressive biography photographing the great men and places of his time  over the course of his life which ended in 1966 at the age of 84.  He eventually became a British citizen and lived  the last 54 years of his life in Britain.

Here are some of my favorites from his London scenes  as well as a wonderful portrait of sculptor Auguste Rodin, best known, of course, for his  The Thinker sculpture .

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And the Winner Is…

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged on October 5, 2012| 3 Comments »

I have went over all of the entries for the Name This Painting! contest that ended on Wednesday.  There were so many that could have easily fit the painting but one, Shedding Daylight, stuck with me from the moment I first saw it.  As I went over the list yesterday, I would compare each title to Shedding Daylight and, though some were very close, none eclipsed it in my estimation.

The winning title was submitted by Linda Leinen , a longtime visitor of the blog, from down  in Texas.  She will be receiving her prize sometime this coming week.  Thanks for the great title , Linda!

And thanks to everyone who took part in the contest.  The titles were  wonderful and well thought out.  As I said, I wish I could send you all prizes.  We’ll do this again next year.

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Contest Ends!

Posted in Favorite Things, Video, tagged , on October 4, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Well, this year’s Name This Painting! contest has come to an end, as of  several hours ago.  There are so  many worthy titles here.  I’m going to go over the list today and choose the one that I feel fits best.  I will announce the winner tomorrow although it seems hard to say that some of these titles are not winners in some way.  I want to thank everyone who submitted titles.  Your insights and thoughts are really inspirational, believe me.  If I could, I would be sending you all prizes.

So, as I go back to contemplating which title stands out for me, here’s a version of a favorite song of mine, Perfect Day from Lou Reed.  I’ve played his original version before here but this is a bit different.  It’s actually a BBC promo that has multitudes of artists singing lines from the song.  But the power of the song comes through.  Enjoy and come back tiomorrow to see which title wins.

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