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Archive for October, 2014

Transformational Power

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, tagged , , on October 14, 2014| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Early LandscapeThis is a painting from about 17 or 18 years back.  I chose it for today’s post because last night I was the guest speaker at the Annual Dinner for the Arts Center of Yates County and  used the transformational power of art as as a theme for my remarks.  I look at this painting and I can see how my work has changed over the years.  But more importantly, the transformation I see in this painting reminds me of the changes that have taken place in my life as a result of my involvement with the arts.

In addition to sharing the story of how I came  to painting, I spoke of  being empowered by discovering a voice in the images that speak for me of my deepest emotions where words fail me.  About how the purpose and responsibility that art has provided for me has enriched my life and connected me with the outer world.  About how art has allowed me to clearly see what I am and am not.

Art has provided so much for me and I urged those in attendance, all involved locally in some way with the arts, to take note of the gifts that art has given them and to encourage others to become involved in the arts so that they, too, might experience similar gifts.

I want to thank the members of Arts Center of Yates County for inviting me to speak and for being such a warm and receptive audience.  Your interest and friendly attitude made me made me feel very welcome and for that I am truly grateful.  All the best to you in the coming year.

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Ever Reaching

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged , , , , on October 13, 2014| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers Ever ReachingThree Rules of Work: Out of clutter find simplicity; From discord find harmony; In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

–Albert Einstein

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This Einstein is a pretty smart guy.

 Simplification, harmony and opportunity could be  ingredients for any recipe to success in any field but I think they apply particularly well to art.  I know that I can easily apply these three rules to my own work.

For me, its strength lies in its ability to transmit through simplification and harmony.  The forms are often simplified versions of reality, shedding details that don’t factor into what it is trying to express.

There is often an underlying texture in the work that is chaotic and discordant.  The harmonies in color and form painted over these create a tension, a feeling of wholeness in the work.  A feeling of finding a pattern in the chaos that makes it all seem sensible.

And the final rule–opportunity lying in the midst of difficulty– is perhaps the easiest to apply.  The best work always seems to rise from the greatest depths, those times when the mind has to move from its normal trench of thought.  Times when it has to find new ways to move the message ahead.   The difficulties of life are often great but there is almost always an opportunity or lesson to be found within them if only we are able to take a deep breath and see them.  These lesson always find their way into the work in some way.

Thanks for the thought, Mr. Einstein.

The painting above is called Ever Reaching, a new 16″ by 20″ canvas that is part of my upcoming show at the Kada Gallery in early December.

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Pale Blue Eyes

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , on October 12, 2014| 1 Comment »

Green Eye CloseupIt’s Sunday morning.

Quiet and I don’t have a lot on my mind.  Just thinking about some work that is on the easel that needs a bit of work, soemthing to bring it to a close.  It’s there waiting and I ready myself to jump in.

Some days you need a kick to wake up  and get into it but this morning I just want a quiet vibe as I slide into the work.  So I settle on on some music from the late and great Lou Reed when he was with the Velvet Underground.  Pale Blue Eyes.

That’s nice.  Relax and have a great Sunday.

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Winding Through

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , on October 10, 2014| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Winding Through smJourneys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think.

-Lawrence Durrell

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This new painting, Winding Through, is making its own journey, heading out to the Just Looking Gallery in San Luis Obispo, CA along with a group of other new work.  The idea of journeying, inwardly and outwardly, is very much the theme of this  36″ by 24″ canvas and the above quote from Lawrence Durrell fits well with this theme.

We can set a course for a destination and make all sorts of plans toward arriving at that endpoint.  But plans seldom account for the obstacles encountered along the way and the way in which we react to and are changed by them.  These reactions and changes mold us, create a new version of ourselves.  And despite our best intentions to remain true to the course we set earlier, we may find our new selves on a completely different path headed to a very different endpoint, sometimes much better or worse than that originally intended.

But occasionally, we wind our way through the obstacles and changes and find ourselves at a place where we had hoped to be right from the start.  We are much different than we began as a result of the journey and how we see that endpoint may be slightly different than we first imagined.  In fact, it may only seem like our original endpoint because as we adapted to the bumps of the road our endpoint adjusted as well, moving to coincide with the lessons we were learning along the way.

We become what we are to become.

This is only a quick, early morning reading of what I see here.  Off hand, I can think of hundreds, maybe thousands, of exceptions and additions to the paragraphs above.  I may not even agree with it by the end of the day.

But that, too, is part of the journey…

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Power to the People

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Influences, Music, tagged , , , , , on October 9, 2014| Leave a Comment »

John Lennon Jurgen Vollmer PhotoIt’s John Lennon‘s birthday today and while I was trying to think of one of his solo songs that would I like to feature here, one kept popping up in my mind.  It was Power to the People from 1971.

For me , this song brings back a flurry of personal memories of that time and of certain places.  I remember listening to this song as it came from the little speaker on a small portable radio that was my pride and joy in those days that predated the Walkman, the iPod and the smartphones that were to come.

It was square in shape and had a padded leather case and a leather handle and I had chosen it out of a Century catalog.  Century was regional chain of catalog showrooms, places where you would go in and enter the product number from a catalog and put it in a tray  for a clerk to pick up and send to  the warehouse space at the rear of the showroom.  You would then wait until your chosen product would come up on a small conveyor and would be whisked off by a clerk who would call you to the counter via the PA.  It seems like such a strange and antiquated system now but it was one of those places that you grew up with, so it seemed natural at the time.

So there I was, a twelve year old kid with a little square radio listening to my local AM station– there were no FM stations in our area yet although they would pop up rapidly in the next few years.  There was something about this song for me at that time playing from that radio that imprinted on my memory.  Maybe it was that the idea of the people banding together in order to be heard resonated with those feelings of powerlessness that many twelve year olds have felt through the ages.  Maybe it was an omen of my populist views to come or maybe it just sounded great coming out of that tinny little speaker.

Whatever the case, I still hear that song today in the context of that memory and get the same feeling that I got those forty-some years ago.  Lennon would have been 74 today.  Thanks for the memory, John. PS: the phot at the top is a Jurgen Vollmer photo of Lennon taken during the early Hamburg days. Itwas used on Lennon’s Rock and Roll LP.

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Ride Into the Wild

Posted in Neat Stuff, Video, tagged , , , , on October 8, 2014| 2 Comments »

danny-macaskill-rides-the-ridge-at-the-isle-of-skye-scotlandDanny MacAskill is a Scottish bicycle trials rider, which means he has amazing bicycle-handling skills.  Trials riding involves going through extremely difficult obstacle courses without setting a foot to the ground at any point.  MacAskill has taken this ability to new levels over the years, traveling the world to find ever more arduous challenges for him and his bike, releasing a number of videos documenting his feats.  You can go to his website for more information on his past exploits.

But perhaps his greatest feat to date took place in the very place from which he came, the Isle of Skye in Scotland.  He recently took on the fabled  peaks of the Cuillin Mountains,  a rugged and jagged ridgeline that seems almost impassable for anyone on two wheels let alone two legs.  The resulting film is a beautifully shot and pretty amazing.  There is breath-taking scenery and riding that will make you hold your breath.  If you have a few minutes, take a look.  You will be thrilled in some form.

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Dedicated Follower of Fashion/ Redux

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Music, Video, tagged , , , , , on October 7, 2014| 2 Comments »

GC Myers-Dedicated Follower of FashionThis piece from years ago always sticks out to me when I am rambling around in my past work.  I am never quite sure if I like this piece which is an odd thing for me.  I usually have one overriding opinion on most of my work with little ambivalence.  But this one always gnaws at me and I stll find myself wondering why. 

I showed this on this blog back in 2009 but I thought it was worth showing again today along with its inspiration, a Kinks song describing the 60’s era London fashionistas.

Here it is:

This is called Dedicated Follower of Fashion, based on the song of the same name from the mind of Ray Davies and the Kinks.

I call this one of the Exiles pieces but I’m not really sure if it truly fits. It was done at the same time back in 1995 or ’96 and performed in the same manner but lacks the emotional depth of the others. In fact, it’s defining feature is its lack of emotional content.

I think that this blankness may have been the factor that led me to shape this piece into its final form. The elements of the face were the first part completed and basically dictate, in the way I work, where the painting goes. For instance, he could have been place on a vast and deep plain that sweeps to the distance behind him but that didn’t fit for me.

There was something in his oddly colored features that reminded me of the vanity and obsequiousness of many fashionistas. And that’s where the Kinks come in.

So, maybe he doesn’t quite fit in with the other Exiles but maybe that in itself makes him an exile of sorts.

Anyway, here are the Kinks doing the song…

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Keep Me In Your Heart

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , , , on October 5, 2014| 2 Comments »

giphy falling leavesFirst frost of the season.  As I got out of bed and looked out the window, there was thin layer of silvery shine on the grass beyond the wood’s edge.  There is a real bite in the air as I walk to the studio understanding that autumn is truly upon us now.  A bit later,  as I look out of the studio window, this realization is reinforced as the sunlight filters through the oranges and yellows of the turning leaves, indicating with certainty that the summer is gone and the harsh beauty of winter will soon be here. This filtered light and thoughts of summer gone and winter ahead create a wistful feeling in the air.

It’s one of the rewards of the changing seasons here, a built-in reminder of time passing that serves as a metaphor for our own lives, our own mortality and the ephemeral gift which we are given.  And while simply watching a golden leaf lazily fall through the low angle of the sun to the frosted grass below might not seem like much of a gift, there are times when it feels priceless.

And that is how it feels this morning.

In that vein, the music I have selected for this Sunday morning is a wistful song from the late Warren Zevon.  It’s a song, Keep Me in Your Heart,  that he wrote while in the throes of the terminal cancer that took his life.  Zevon led an interesting, if sometimes crazy, life.  His father, a Jewish Russian immigrant, was a bookie and close friend of mobster Mickey Cohen.  When Warren was 13 he studied with Igor Stravinsky before quitting high school in the early 60’s to go to NYC to be a folksinger.  He knocked around for years before finding success both as a songwriter and performer.  This success came and went several times, often as result of his own self-destructive behavior.  He died in 2003 at age 56.  I’ve always thought it was shame that so many people only know him for Werewolves of London when he wrote so many other beautiful songs such as this.

Take in the day fully and enjoy.

 

 

 

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Change

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Quote, Technique/History, tagged , , , on October 3, 2014| 2 Comments »

To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

~Henri Bergson

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GC Myers 1994 Early Work Illustrative Styling

If you have read this blog for some time, you probably have noticed that I periodically like to revisit old work, especially those early pieces from when I was still in the process of finding voice.  It’s an interesting period for me to look at because the changes were coming fast, sometimes on what seemed to be a daily basis, as new things were tried, some sparking new directions and some being quickly set aside.

It was a much different set of circumstances than the way I currently work.  It was a period of fast and furious fireworks, little pops and crackles with every step forward where today it is quieter for periods of time followed by louder booms.  I don’t know if I can explain that any better and am pretty sure it means nothing to anyone but that is the nature of this whole endeavor– trying to make sense of something inexplicable.

I was looking at some early pieces and stopped on this one at the top for a bit, looking at it closely for the first time in many years.  It’s from around 1994 and was at a point where I was still trying to figure out things.  It was very illustrative– I could see it being used in a kid’s book– but there were things I took from it.  The treatment of the sky, for instance, presaged the way my process evolved. It’s a pleasant little piece but it is far from where I wanted to be and even back then I knew it when I finished it then set it aside.  It was not an emotional carrier for me at the time and that was what I was seeking.

The piece  below , Into the Valley, was from around six or seven months later, in early 1995,  and shows the changes that were taking hold in my work.  It is simpler in construction yet seems to say more for me, seems to have some more fundamental thought in it.  GC Myers Into the Valley 1995

I usually take something from these little visits back in time.  The changes become more evident as the style matures then levels off, becoming a bit more subtle, less drastic but more confident.  But always changing, always recreating itself as it matures.

Or so I hope…

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“Art As a Mode of Knowing”

Posted in Neat Stuff, tagged , , , , on October 1, 2014| 2 Comments »

Jerome Bruner On Knowing CoverToday, October 1, is the 99th birthday of groundbreaking psychologist Jerome Bruner, who, by the way, still teaches at NYU.  To be honest, I don’t know a lot about Bruner or his work.  But on the BrainPickings site today, Maria Popova wrote a wonderful essay about one of Bruner’s articles, Art As a Mode of Knowing, from his 1962 book, On Knowing: Essays For the Left Hand.  In it she describes how : Bruner considers the unique language of art and how it complements that of science. He outlines the four psychological aspects of the art experience — connectedness, which deals with the reward of grasping the essential ideas a work of art communicates; effort, which we exert to draw meaning from the ambiguity of art; conversion of impulse, which makes an object of beauty move us; and generality, which deals with the universal aspects of what we find beautiful and moving.

It’s a great article, one that I highly recommend for anyone who has wondered about what defines the difference between art and decoration and why we are moved by some works and left emotionally unsatisfied before others.  I know that I am often perplexed by work that I see that is incredibly crafted and beautiful to look at yet doesn’t raise any response from within me.  What is it that makes this beautiful thing so cool and vacant?  Is it art or is it just a wonderful decorative piece?  Popova’s article sheds some light on Bruner’s insights into this matter and it rings true for me.

Happy birthday, Professor Bruner, and thank you for these wonderful observations.

Click here to see the article.

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